


Lay Me Down, Let Me Dream

by katnissdoesnotfollowback (lost_on_cloud_9), titania522



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Heaven, Hell, Hurt, Minor Character Death, Prompts in Panem, Reincarnation, Romance, Supernatural - Freeform, everlark fanfiction, what dreams may come
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-19
Updated: 2015-04-20
Packaged: 2018-03-24 18:16:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 59,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3778918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_on_cloud_9/pseuds/katnissdoesnotfollowback, https://archiveofourown.org/users/titania522/pseuds/titania522
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: Katniss and Peeta share a bond so strong, even death cannot defy it.  When tragedy threatens to separate them forever, Peeta risks his soul to save Katniss from an eternity of despair. Inspired by the book, What Dreams May Come  by Richard Matheson and the movie by the same name, starring Robin Williams, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Annabella Sciorra. Written for Prompts in Panem, Real or Not Real: Everlark Dreamscape Week.</p><p>Trigger warnings: Major Character Deaths, Minor Character Deaths, Suicide, Afterlife, Heaven, Hell, Reincarnation (Literally Everybody Dies).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cheeks

**Day 1 of 7: Cheeks**

 

**_Peeta_ **

 

**XXXXX**

 

It’s true what they say. When a person dies, their life really does flash before their eyes.  But it isn’t a B-rated film you watch from the back of the audience in some dingy theater.  No, you are a part of the film, and you don’t just watch but you relive every thought, every feeling, every moment from your expiration from the world, in reverse, until your in your mother’s womb again.

 

I was stubborn about dying and so didn’t recognize what I was experiencing, even though everyone had always talked about those near death experiences. I didn’t want to acknowledge the fact, even as I literally re-experienced every sensation of every thought and action of my life all over again. I convinced myself that it was a dream.  I clung to the earth like a ship-wreck survivor clings to his life raft, even as the angry sea crashes down to dislodge him. It wasn’t life I wanted at all costs though.  Not in and of itself, despite the bakery, my art, or our cat.  It was her.  I couldn’t leave Katniss, even as the capricious hand of God himself came along to pluck me away.

 

So, when the moment came for me to finally leave, I was forced to do it for the same reason I had done everything else in my life; because it was better for her.  I had had no choice, and in leaving, also left her with no choice but to do what she finally did.

 

**XXXXX**

 

It was one of those perfect spring days when we first met.  I was sorting the pastries in the display case of the bakery, earning my way through college as I had earned my way through life, by working in my parents’ shop. I’d been tossing bags of flour and sugar for as long as I could remember. I was frosting cookies at five, baking by eight and could run the shop alone by the time I was in middle school. I was a good son, a great student and the best employee that a parent could get; at least, that’s the idea I’d always had about myself.

 

My mind was full  of the topic of my next Sophomore art paper - an explication of Chagall’s _Bella & Ida_ \-  when the bell tinkled, the creaking of the heavy wood door clicking closed soon after.  I looked up to find a young woman carefully studying the treats, a slender finger tapping her full lips in contemplation as she considered the selection.  As she made up her mind, I glanced behind her to study what passed as downtown traffic in town, but I couldn’t keep my attention focused, my eyes magnetically drawn back to the dark rope of glossy hair that hung over her shoulder, the smooth, olive-skinned profile. When she looked up at me, ready to order, I found myself falling into the bottomless grey of her eyes, plunging downwards as if I’d slipped on the edge of a small, glassy pond and was suddenly looking out into the world I’d abandoned from beneath its crystalline surface.

 

I knew at that moment, without real knowledge, but instinctively, that I stood on the edge of something monumental.  Suddenly, I felt a great certainty about everything under the sun and all the confusion of my life was resolved in her small form.  When she smiled, my heart lurched, as if in recognition of something I’d lost from the beginning of being and had only just found again.  I opened and closed my mouth but that moment of recognition had robbed me of speech and instead I floundered like a captured fish on the shores of her lake.

 

She gave me a shy smile, a certain understanding in her eyes  as she tapped the glass case.  “I’ve been looking all over for cheese buns,” she said slowly, as if testing her knowledge.  “I had the feeling I might find what I was looking for here,” her tapping became a small caress as she ran her finger over the case before coming to a stop at the metal boundary of the counter.

 

“They’re here,” I answered vaguely, still underwater, swimming upwards under her spell.

 

She nodded slowly, waiting patiently as I placed a half-dozen in a bag, because I somehow knew that was how many she needed. Like everything that came afterwards between us, I just knew.

 

As she paid for her purchase, I finally broke the surface, awareness of the world dawning on me again.  She would go from whatever mists had brought her and I could not leave to chance that we would meet again.

 

“Uh, we have blueberry scones...fresh...I just made them and, I mean...they’re good,” I moved quickly behind the counter, a shaky hand yanking a sheet of wax paper as I slid open the door of the display case.  “Or cinnamon rolls?” I pulled one of the sticky buns onto the sheet and handed it to her. “You have to try one, on the house.”

 

Her eyes widened, as she stood somewhat dumbfounded before me.  “I...you’re giving me this?” she asked with a sudden wariness that made me panic.

 

“A...sample.” I stuttered nervously, hoping desperately that I hadn’t done anything wrong. I was suddenly intimidated by her restrained energy, which vibrated around her like a quivering bow.

 

 _Those eyes!_  She continued to study me as if she was trying to decide whether to trust me or not, when she brought the roll to her lips.  Her eyes fluttered closed as she visibly savored the treat, a small moan escaping her lips that rolled over my body and settled in the middle of my stomach.  I knew without her telling me that she liked it.

 

“This is amazing!” she exclaimed when she’d finished it off.

 

“There’s more where that came from,” I answered, which finally drew a smile from her. “What’s your name?”

 

She discarded the wax paper and looked up at me with eyes alive with mirth. “Katniss.”

 

“Katniss,” I repeated as if in a daze before snapping to. “I’m Peeta, of Mellark fame,” I jerked my thumb in the direction of the bakery sign announcing _Mellark’s Family Bakery_ , _since 1952_.

 

Katniss held the bag, now spotting in places from the buttery buns within, and raised an inquisitive eyebrow.  “Good to know.  Now I’ll know where to find you.”  With a wry expression, she pulled the door, causing the bell to tinkle happily again and just as she’d entered, she left, allowing a burst of spring air to enter the shop behind her, overpowering the pungent smell of spices and yeast.

 

I leaned against the counter, letting out my breath and shook my head at myself .  Expecting the giddiness to fade, I returned to my work but found myself repeatedly getting lost in the memory of those grey eyes every time I let my concentration wander.

 

**XXXXX**

 

As soon as my brother, Rohan, showed up for the afternoon shift, I pulled off my apron, dusting myself so that the air around me seemed suspended with billowy puffs of flour that floated gently to the ground.  When I was clean enough, I bound upstairs to the apartment I shared with my family over the bakery and collected my school things, heading towards the University Library. I was looking forward to getting that paper out of the way and, as a reward, work on my Modern Art project.

 

As I walked, I couldn’t stop thinking about the girl, Katniss, who I’d met in the bakery that morning.  I didn’t know her any better than I knew the traffic attendant that guarded the walkway from wayward traffic.  And yet, she was profoundly familiar. I remember wracking my brain, wondering who she was, who she reminded me of but I continuously came up empty.   My rational mind told me she was a stranger but another instinct, the one that took over me when I held my paint brush in hand, the wet fibers hovering over the canvass, causing me to plunge downwards in search of lines and forms; this same instinct told me that she was not a stranger.

 

I shrugged at the paradox, wishing only that I’d thought to get her number so that I would stop obsessing over it and get my head into my work.  As I sat down at the computer station, I pulled out my papers and books, logging onto my account so I could pull up the draft of my paper.  I was lucky that the library had giant windows that stretched from floor to ceiling so I could still enjoy the now waning sun. It was a modern building, so the surfaces were smooth and shiny.  The designers of the library had consciously added the dark wood and plush chairs that were so typically associated with libraries but it was too new to give a sense of sacredness to the information found inside.

It took me back to the summer I visited New York City with my family and we wandered into the New York Public Library. No library could ever compare to the feeling of standing before the eternal knowledge that that library could give.  I paused to savor the feeling, wondering at the way the mind could make connections between so many disparate things and create meaning out of them.  I realized at that moment that the feeling of timeless awe that I’d felt beneath Milton’s ceiling was the same feeling I had experienced when I stood before Katniss.  

 

I smiled at myself as I pulled out my notes and books and forced my wandering mind to focus on my art paper.

 

**XXXXX**

 

After an hour of almost uninterrupted focus, I was suddenly brought out of my zone by a loud sound of books tumbling onto the table of the cubicle adjacent to me. Even with the earbuds in place, I felt the vibration of the heavy tomes against the wood of the table where I worked.  I rubbed my eyes tiredly - I was almost done and would soon print and edit my paper when the person at the table next to me caught my attention.  I could tell it was a girl by the perfect part of her hair visible to me as the young woman bent over her things, no doubt sorting them.

 

When she straightened, I stared in open shock. It was her, the girl from the bakery, and if I had been dumbfounded by her before, I was floored by her now. Her face was etched in a scowl of irritation at the books toppled in disarray at her desk but it did not detract one iota from her perfect symmetry.  I had the sudden, unbidden thought of what the skin of her smooth cheek would feel like cupped in my hand and impulsively flexed and unflexed my fingers in response to her phantom flesh. It was a long moment before I realized that she was staring back at me.

 

“Hi,” I croaked out, certain that I was the color of red beets at having been caught ogling Katniss.

 

“Hi,” she answered, all movement frozen as if she were a deer caught by a hunter.

 

Time held itself in check as we studied each other, students moving around us as if they were dust motes caught in sunlight. It wasn’t until another book threatened to slip out of place that we both came to our senses again.

 

“You’re a student here?” I asked dumbly as she returned to stacking her books.

 

“Yeah. And so are you,” she observed dryly, eyeing my backpack and papers.   “And yet, it doesn’t surprise me at all to see you here,” she smiled shyly, leaning awkwardly against the cubicle edge.

 

“No?  Well, then, how...how did you know I’d be here?” I joked, but only half-heartedly. There was something about this girl that made me feel like everything we said to one another had already been said before.  

 

“I didn’t,” she answered cryptically, the flames of something unquenchable dancing across the surface of the crystal gray waters. “I just figured you’d eventually show up again.”

 

**XXXXX**

 

“Botany?” I asked as we sat on the library steps.  We had begun talking across the cubicle, to the chagrin of other visitors who were disturbed from their studies by our banter.  We were the lucky ones, because the night was breezy and warm and we were the only ones on the giant stone steps.  It was where I’d learned that she had grown up in the Seam, and had attended school in the impoverished part of town.  She spoke of archery and winning an academic scholarship and that was how she was at Panem University.

 

“Yeah,” she answered, “It’s all my dad’s fault. He loved the woods and took me with him every chance he could.”

 

“He must be proud of you,” I said.

 

The change in Katniss’ face was so swift, I quickly regretted my comment. “He would have been, but he died a long time ago.”

 

“I’m sorry,” I said.  

 

We lapsed into a gentle silence as Katniss played with the end of her braid, her face dark and inscrutable.  After several moments, she asked, “How about you?  What do you want to be when you grow up?”

 

I chuckled at this, relieved that I hadn’t shut her down with the memory of her loss.  “I’m studying Art History. I love art and will probably end up teaching it but,” I gave her my most winning smile, “I happen to be a pretty good at drawing so maybe, one day, someone will pay to buy my work.”

 

“I don’t see why not,” she said, smiling back.

 

“I could draw you one day...if you want…” I blurted out, “...that is, if you want, you know, if you want to see me again…” My heart was pounding so hard, it made my teeth chatter.  I felt a soft hand on my arm, which stilled all the angst, leaving another kind of excitement, one that hummed low in my blood.  

 

“I do, Peeta. I want very much to see you again.”

 

**XXXXX**

 

 _Love at first sight_ would be an understatement to describe the way I had been smitten by Katniss.  It seemed that by the time we stopped before the door of her apartment after our first date, I had already embraced the premonition of her indispensability in my life as a fact.  It wasn’t just that she was exquisite - she had the most unblemished skin, grey eyes like cut crystal and a body, as I learned later on, made to fit with mine like a missing puzzle piece.

 

No, what Katniss Everdeen possessed was a fierce devotion to her loved ones, unwavering loyalty and an almost inexhaustible persistence. Almost. Because little did I know that even one like her could reach the limit of her endurance

 

But in that moment, as we stood before the door, what I saw was the limitless possibility of my life open up before me.  I was in love in a hopeless and pathetic way.

 

“I had a really nice night,” Katniss said.

 

“Me too,” I said, unable to tear my eyes away from her face.  The night hung heavy with the scent of jasmine blossoms, a fragrance that I would always associate with her, even after,  when blossoms were no longer possible.  She swayed, as if enchanted and I wanted very much to reach out to her and simply hold her, to root her to me and keep her from floating away. As I contemplated her, the splintery wood door opened and a young blond girl poked her head out.

 

“Katniss?” she asked, eyeing me warily.

 

“Prim, I’ll be up in a minute,” Katniss hissed, a flush of pink climbing up her neck.

 

“You know I don’t like to be alone!” Prim said and if she seemed young before, she appeared positively infantile now, her pink lips protruding in a dramatic pout, slender arms crossed in front of her before she turned and stomped up the stairs with exaggerated irritation.

 

“Johanna’s with you!” Katniss retorted in a huff before turning back to speak to me. “I’m sorry. She’s not used to me being out after dark,” Katniss explained with exasperation.

 

I was taken aback that a girl of Katniss’ age would have a curfew.  “Do you have to be in at a certain time?”

 

“No! I mean, not really. But Prim is really too young to be left by herself.” Katniss said, glancing toward the stairs where Prim had escaped.

 

“Is she your…?” I asked, completely confused now.  “I mean, you don’t look old enough to have a girl that old…”  If she had a child, surely it would have come up during dinner.

 

“You mean my daughter?” Katniss asked with a look of astonishment before bursting into laughter. “Oh, god, no!  She’s my sister!”

 

“Oh, okay. I guess you help your mother out by watching her.” I said, still unable to capture her living arrangement.  

 

But Katniss only stared at me as if debating something with herself. Finally, she cocked her head in the direction of the stairs where her sister had gone.  “My mother isn’t with us anymore. When my father died, she became very depressed. She was committed two years ago but she might as well have been gone long before then.” She squared her shoulders as if in preparation for a fight. “It’s just me and my sister.”

 

Katniss hadn’t failed to surprise me that night, not with her story of her academic scholarship, working her way through school, her love of nature, her dreams to become a scientist.  However, she never mentioned her mother and now I understood why - it was shame that flushed her cheeks as she confessed to her sister’s dependence on her.  I felt pity for this girl who was so brave, so responsible and I was hurt on her behalf that she should have ever had to endure such a heavy burden at such a young age.

 

I thought all of these things under her watchful eyes. Without warning, her gaze hardened and she looked at me pointedly. “I don’t date very often because I’m a package deal and not everyone wants to date a girl who has to work when she’s not in school and is raising a kid by herself. If you’re not up to it, there’s the street,” she indicated in the direction of the pavement.  “No hard feelings.”

 

Her vehemence caught me by surprise.  “Is that an ultimatum?”

 

Katniss eyes widened momentarily, as if in fear. “I suppose it is.”

 

“Okay.” I said.

 

“Okay?  What’s okay?” she demanded and even her anger captivated me.

 

“Okay.” I said as I stepped towards her. “I accept your challenge. Now can I kiss you?”

 

Katniss froze in shock,  before her lips curled in humor, her laughter bubbling up, warm and raspy in her chest.  “Yes. You can kiss me.”

 

I could have devoured her right then and there but restrained myself because the warm press of her mouth beneath mine was so perfect, I wanted to savor just that sensation alone.  She was everything that was soft and inviting, though her character was one of the toughest I’d ever known. I would eventually sketch that moment - her hands resting against my shoulders, my own hands on her hips, her head tilted back to reach upwards towards mine.  I would try hard to capture the sense of the inevitable that later accompanied every moment of my life that I spent with Katniss.  I felt it even after life and I had parted ways and made everything that came after our separation virtually impossible to endure.

 

**XXXXX**

 

My family, before Katniss, had been made up of my mother, my father and my two brothers, Rohan and Phillip.  My mother, a somewhat taciturn woman with a fierce disposition, was the minority amongst so many men. One of the few things she approved of about my relationship with Katniss was that it infused, right away, the addition of two women in the middle of so much testosterone. She would never be best friends with Katniss - that was not my mother’s way and Katniss had zero tolerance for pretension of any sort - a quality my mother had in abundance.

 

However, Prim was another matter altogether. She had the type of personality that could conquer even the hardest heart.  She was so young; only 12 when I first met her but her gentle, wise spirit was evident even then.  Her pale blond hair and soft blue eyes bespoke innocence and purity and it was hard not to get pulled into her sphere of influence.

 

“Peeta and I made these,” she said excitedly after one night after dinner.

 

Katniss smiled at the plate Prim held. “What did you make, little duck?”

 

Prim beamed in pride as she showed the contents to Katniss. “Almond cookies. And look here,” she pointed at a group lying on the plate, “I frosted them.  Here is one in the shape of a katniss flower, just for you. “

 

“Oh, thank you!” Katniss said in happy surprise as she pulled her sister into a tight hug.  

 

“Peeta taught me,” Prim said proudly.

 

“Well, you’re a quick study. You’ll be able to make these on your own in no time at all,” I said, which caused her to flush with pleasure.

 

After Katniss tucked her into bed, she sat down next to me on her sofa, curling her feet under her and leaning against me.

 

“She’s everything that’s good in the world for me,” Katniss said in a moment of unguarded candor.  “The day my father died, if it hadn’t been for my Uncle Haymitch, we would have been in foster care.  My mother fell apart and Prim was truly devastated by that. She didn’t understand why she couldn’t reach my mother.”

 

“I can’t even imagine what that must have been like,” I said with sincere empathy. It wasn’t perfection, but I had my family and could count on my parents.  “Prim’s won my mother over - that says a lot.”

 

Katniss chuckled. “Your mother intimidates me,” she admitted.

 

“She intimidates _me_!” I answered, a shiver of fear at the idea of my mother’s wrath running through my body.  “But she is smitten by your sister so we might have a reprieve from her general foulness because of that.”

 

Katniss laughed. “You see, there are advantages to having adorable twelve year olds in your life.”

 

“I have no complaints,” I answered before turning to kiss her.  She tilted her head upwards and kissed me back, her lips parting beneath mine in invitation.  I could spend a day just kissing her - the taste of her made me simultaneously both full and hungry. When she reached up to tug my curls, I lost all sense of where I was, my hands making their way down her sides to grasp her hips. We ended stretched out on the sofa, Katniss laying pressed beneath me.  I couldn’t stop kissing her, my mouth flooded by her as she nipped at my lips before letting her tongue have free roam.  Like so many times before, I pulled away before things got too heated.

 

However, to my surprise, she wrapped her legs around me and clutched me to her. I was trapped and though I was at least twice as strong as her, she had me at her mercy. My body reacted to her with sudden and total abandon.  I ground my hips into hers as her hands found their way beneath my shirt, fingernails raking across my skin.  The sensation was so delicious, I gasped into her mouth, eliciting a satisfied smile from her.

 

“Peeta…” she sighed as my lips ran the length of her neck and shoulders, “Let’s go to my room.”

 

“Are you...are you sure?” I panted, trying to gather my senses.

 

“I’ve been sure ever since you gave me those cheese buns…” she whispered with an intensity that left me breathless.  “Please?”

 

I was up in a heartbeat, pulling her up off the sofa and lifting her up in my arms.  She laughed as I carried her to her room, shushing me even though I hadn’t said a word.   When we had passed the threshold, I kicked the door shut, causing us both to tumble ungracefully onto the bed.  We both laughed as we peeled away the layers of our clothes, our humor at our clumsiness giving way to a more serious kind of play and I realized in that moment I’d never touch another woman again. This epiphany caused me to pause in my frantic movements and I savored her unveiling, knowing that all my firsts from now on would only be with her.  I kissed her shoulders, her arms, her beautiful, perfect breasts, her belly, so flat and smooth, I left open-mouth kisses over the expanse of her smooth skin.  She moaned and sighed, gasped and shouted as I made my acquaintance with her body for the first time that night.  With methodical precision, I pressed her backwards onto the bed, spreading her legs widely  and buried my face in the apex of her thighs, wanting nothing more than to wear on my hair and skin the distinct smell of her .

 

As I stroked her with my fingers and tongue, learning the secret to her pleasure, I felt her pant against me. She held my head in place as I lavished her with my tongue, plunging and sucking until she bowed her back and called out my name - “Peeta!” quietly , always quietly - and comically shushed me again even though, again, I hadn’t spoken. The tremors of her release wracked her body and in that sweet moment of abandon, I sheathed myself in a condom and slowly sank into her still fluttering depths.   

 

I held her gaze as I moved over her, slowly at first to draw out her orgasm before I built momentum, enjoying the infinite warmth of her around me.  Her eyes were dark with her own desire, and I got lost in them again.  She pulled me down again for a kiss, rolling her hips in time with my rhythm and in this way, I rocked us both to our next precipice, where I fell over with her, hurtling through space.  The sound of my name on her lips never ceased to thrill me but in that moment, if I never heard another sound again in my life, it would have been enough. Katniss clawed and shuddered with her orgasm while I groaned and let go, falling in a useless heap of flesh and bone when it was over.

 

My senses were scattered to the four winds, the ability to concentrate on anything rational having floated away on the waves of my release. But there was one certainty that I had, the one that I possessed from the day I met her, the one that I would keep after everything had been said and done. I loved Katniss.  Loved her in such a way that it felt like I’d loved her all my life.

 

“As if I already knew you before I’d even met you,” she whispered quietly and I realized I had said the words out loud.  It didn’t matter, for our love was a secret knowledge we had carried within us before the day she walked into my parent’s bakery.  She took my face in both her hands, her thumbs caressing my cheeks and kissed me, deeply, languidly, with the full intent of marking the moment before pulling back to gaze at me.

 

“Is it even possible to love someone in that way?” she asked.  “Can something like that be real?”

 

I thread my fingers in her wild hair, tugging gently at the tangles I found there.  “It’s real, Katniss. As real as you and I are at this very moment.”

 

**XXXXX**

 

We were married almost the year to the day that we met, right after graduation.  We had a small wedding party - my brothers, her friend Johanna, who had often babysat Prim, as well as Prim herself, who served as the maid of honor.  To round out the pack was my best friend, Finnick, and his wife Annie, whom I’d known all my life in Panem.

 

“She’s a work of art, mate,” Finnick had said when he first met her.  “How on earth did you catch someone like that?”

 

“Oh, stop it, Finn!” Annie said in that breathless way she had of speaking. Finnick was studying medicine and, being several years older than me, was almost done with his medical studies and searching for a residency. Annie taught first grade at the local elementary school. “Peeta is quite a catch!  She’s as lucky as he is.”

 

“Thanks, Annie!” I said good-naturedly as I raised my beer bottle to toast.  “The only good taste Finnick ever showed was in marrying you.”

 

Annie chuckled as Finnick groaned.  “Well, flattery will get you everywhere!”

 

Finnick had to eat his words on the day of our wedding. I was positively dashing, not just because of the very expensive wedding suit.  Katniss would finally be my wife and I didn’t think there were many other things that could make me more happy at that moment and that happiness shone brightly in every thing I did.

 

**XXXXX**

 

We’d gone to the sanitorium where her mother was being treated to break the news of our engagement and upcoming nuptials.  I had begun accompanying Katniss and Prim on these trips because they were hard on Katniss and left her in a depression when they were done.  It was clear that Katniss took after her father because Mrs. Everdeen was an older version of Prim. She had once been a beautiful woman but now it was obvious that she lived like a shadow among the living.

 

“Momma!” Prim chirped cheerfully, kneeling before her seated mother and hugging her gently to her as if she would break.

 

“My girls. My darling girls,”  Mrs. Everdeen said in a mild panic and I understood suddenly why Katniss’ mother could not be in the world any longer. Everything, even her own instinctive love for her children, overwhelmed and terrified her, reducing her to immobility as a defense against those intense feelings.  I gripped Katniss’ hand as we watched Prim try to talk to her.

 

“Katniss has some news for you, mom!” Prim said with heartbreaking hope.  Perhaps she thought the idea of something happy might bring her back to herself.

 

“Mom,” Katniss said. “You remember Peeta, right?”

 

“Yes, dear, of course,” the wraith-like woman said gently, nodding kindly to me.

 

“We’re getting married,” Katniss started shakily. She cleared her throat before speaking again.  “Peeta and I are getting married this summer, after graduation,”

 

Mrs. Everdeen looked from me to Katniss and back again, wrestling with comprehending her words.  “Married?”

 

“Yes, mom. Married,” Katniss answered but something in her voice hardened, catching my attention. I moved closer to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulder.

 

“Married?” repeated Mrs. Everdeen. “I was married once,” she whispered.  “But now he’s gone.” She turned her head to look out the window as if she could see her deceased husband there.

 

“Mom?” Prim asked, prodding her gently.  “Did you hear what Katniss said? She’s getting married!  I saw her dress!  She’s going to be so pretty!”

 

But Mrs. Everdeen was no longer with us. Maybe she’d gotten lost in a memory of her own, one that she shared only with her long-lost husband.  Katniss sagged against me and I understood what was in her voice earlier. She’d seen this coming. She knew her mother would not have the means to give her blessing, which is what Katniss desperately wanted.  It wasn’t cruelty, though I was impatient and secretly angry at what I thought was her mother’s selfishness at the time. Knowing what I know now, I understand that Mrs. Everdeen’s soul was half in this world and half in her husband’s plane and she could no more fully interact with those of us here on Earth than we could have conversed with the angels.  I now recognize her desperation and illness for what it really was - terminal, soul-rending heartbreak. It was a condition that had seized her from the world of the living, a condition her daughter would someday succumb to.  And it would be fully and completely my fault.

 

**XXXXX**

 

So Katniss was not only beautiful that day. She was radiant as the sun.  And I was a satellite caught in her orbit, full of happiness and the monumental importance of the moment. On that day, I bound myself to her and to her sister in the most powerful way I knew how.  They both belonged to me, to care for in equal measure.  When I said “I do,” I did so with all the naive optimism of youth, and gave myself over to the illusion of my immortality.  For I truly believed I would have the rest of my life to show Katniss all the ways that I loved her.

 

**XXXXX**

 

 


	2. Rats

**Day 2 of 7: Rats**

**_Katniss_ **

**XXXXXX**

Do you know that feeling? When something is so good it just can’t last? I didn’t really think of myself as a pessimist. Not until things turned upside down so fast that sometimes I forgot how to breathe. How to live. I suppose I should have known, though. My parents were so blissfully in love and happy together, and look where that got them.

The day I married Peeta, Prim stood beside me, bouncing on her toes as though she were a bird ready to take flight. I had no idea where she was headed on her flight, but I couldn’t wait to watch her soar. And Peeta…all I had to do was look into the fractals of blue that arrested my attention that day in the bakery and never let go to know that I was exactly where I wanted to be. Where I was supposed to be. I didn’t think I had it in me to marry someone within a year of meeting him, but with Peeta, I had no defenses. Didn’t need them.

Our life together was almost idyllic. He and his brothers started to take over their parents’ bakery when stoic Mrs. Mellark decided it was time to retire and move further south. Good riddance. Peeta never complained, but the things she said to him sometimes made me seethe in anger until he’d grab my hands, clenched into fists, and murmur for me to sheath my claws, after which he would calm me with a kiss.

In addition to the bakery, he painted and showed his work, eventually earning a regular spot in a gallery uptown and a few loyal patrons. As for me, I landed a research grant at the university and went on to earn my Master’s Degree. I had plans to keep going for a PhD, as well, but in the meantime, I loved my work with the university. And Prim…Prim blossomed.

I had expected drama and strife when the three of us found a house and moved in together, but Peeta made the transition smooth, the same way he did with every other transition he brought to our lives. He rose to the challenge and exceeded all of my expectations when it came to Prim. The three of us became our own kind of family. It didn’t hurt that Prim’s mangy cat, Buttercup, took an almost immediate liking to him.

So, really, I should have expected it to all come crashing down. But the thought never occurred to me until it was too late. And I wasn’t ready for the fall.

**XXXXXX**

“Sunscreen, Little Duck,” I admonished my sister when she bounded through the kitchen, her braided hair whipping around as she looked over her shoulder to scrunch her nose at me. Then I turned to call toward the studio. “Peeta, breakfast!”

Prim’s music blared from her room, competing with the softer tones emanating from Peeta’s studio, all layered together with the sizzling sounds of eggs and bacon in the pan. I had all three plates loaded and on the table before Peeta entered the kitchen, walking up behind me and pulling me back against him, dropping a kiss on the side of my neck.

“Mmm, smells wonderful.”

“Me or the breakfast?” I teased, wriggling against him and eliciting a low growl.

“Both. And be careful. I’m tempted to cancel your hike and spend the day in bed with you, making your toes curl.”

As he anchored me with one arm, the other hand drifted up under my shirt, the rough pads of his fingers tickling the skin over my ribs.

“Stop,” I laughed. “You already did that last night.”

“Ew. Gross, you two,” Prim groaned as she returned to the kitchen, prompting Peeta to release me and slide into his own chair.

Picking up his fork, he pointed it at Prim. “One of these days, missy, I’m going to catch you kissing some boy. And do you know what I’m going to say?”

“ _Put a ring on it first? Prim likes diamonds?_ ” she suggested brightly and bit into a crispy slice of bacon. “Preferably emerald-cut diamonds.”

For a moment, Peeta’s mouth dropped open, a little stunned, but then he shrugged and loaded his fork with eggs. “Okay, I can work with that.”

“Sunscreen, Primrose?” I repeated as I sat on Peeta’s left, across from Prim. “We’re going to be outside a long time today.”

“Yes, mother. Already put it on.” She rolled her eyes, exasperated, but the brightness in her expression betrayed her excitement despite the sarcastic tone she tried to take. “Are you sure you can’t come with us, Peeta?”

He shook his head. “Sorry, Prim. I have to meet with the suppliers for the bakery. Besides, you and Katniss get the whole day for girl talk.”

“Ugh,” Prim groaned, smiling at me warmly. “So that means we’ll be talking about my math homework and the Latin names for every mushroom and blade of grass we come across. And if I have to sit through one more lecture on the importance of fungus to the ecosystem…”

I scowled at her assessment of my lack of girl-talk abilities. “Well, we could talk about what’s going on with you and Rory Hawthorne, if you prefer.”

Prim’s eyes widened and she ducked her head, shoveling eggs in her mouth and then stuffing in a huge bite of biscuit until her cheeks were comically swollen. Peeta coughed, choking on his eggs a little, and dropped his fork. It clanked against the plate and he flattened his palms on the table.

“What’s this?” he asked when his airway was clear again. “Do I need to break out my deadly bags of flour? Start rehearsing my big brother speech? And why am I the last to know?”

Prim mumbled incoherently and I stifled a laugh. “I’ve got it covered,” I told him with a raise of my eyebrows.

“Oh geez,” he said with a grin. “I thought the idea was to keep her potential dates scared enough to behave, not give them a premature heart attack.”

Prim snorted and coughed around her food while I scowled at Peeta and he responded with a wink. When Prim finally swallowed, she glared at us both in turn.

“We are friends. So we talk. A lot. Could you two not traumatize him before he gets a chance to ask me to Prom? Please?” She begged with all the earnestness of a sixteen year old who hadn’t had her first kiss but eagerly anticipated it.

Peeta and I shared a look, then shook our heads and spoke in unison. “Nope.”

“Ugh. You two disgust me,” Prim said before she gulped down her juice and stood. She disappeared to brush her teeth and finish getting ready while I smiled over the rim of my mug of tea at Peeta, pretending not to notice him reaching under the table to feed scraps of bacon to Buttercup.

When Prim was ready to go, her pack hanging from one shoulder, she leaned her cheek against Peeta’s, a soft smile on her face.

“See you tonight. And you’ve got paint in your hair.”

Peeta’s hand flew to his hair and he fingered the strands at the nape of his neck. He chuckled and said he guessed he’d have to get a shower before he headed into town. Prim skipped towards the garage and I leaned over to kiss Peeta on the lips. He pulled me down to sit in his lap and the kiss turned heated. Three years married and he still never failed to leave me breathless, my body humming the tune of desire under his lips and palms.

“We better get going,” I gasped out when our lips separated. “And so should you.”

“Have fun,” he whispered, leaning his forehead against mine and cupping my cheek to caress it with his thumb. “I’ll have dinner and a hot bath ready for you when you get back.”

Pecking his lips one last time, I stood and grabbed my car keys from the kitchen counter. Prim poked her head back in and smiled at Peeta.

“Are you making dessert with that dinner?”

With a laugh, Peeta started washing the breakfast dishes. “How’s cherry-chocolate cheesecake sound, eavesdropper?”

“Divine,” she answered with a breathy sigh. I gave her shoulder a little shove back out the door, but she lingered just a moment. “Love you, Peeta.”

“Love you, too, Prim,” he said it quietly and delicately, as though he was still almost afraid he couldn't have any of Prim’s love. I reminded myself to tell him that night that his love and caring for Prim was one of the things I adored about him.

It was a short drive to the edges of town and up into the hills. The forest lay bedecked in fresh spring foliage, the kind of green so new, it almost hurt to look at it. When we reached the trailhead, Prim unfolded herself from the car and slammed the door. She stretched, breathing deeply of the spring air while I double-checked my rucksack for the supplies we would need.

As we set off down the trail, we remained silent for a time, drinking in the sunshine and growing warmth of the fresh air. Prim plucked a yellow dandelion and tucked it into my braid.

“What’s that for, Little Duck?”

Prim shrugged and smiled. “I see Peeta drawing them all the time and you look radiant today. So when are you two going to make me an aunt?”

“What?” I asked incredulously, stunned by the sudden change in subject.

“I want little babies with black hair and bright blue eyes to spoil. I am _so_ going to be the cool aunt. Peeta’s sisters-in-law aren’t gonna be able to compete with my awesomeness.”

I shook my head as we followed the zig-zag pattern of the trail down into the valley. Peeta and I had talked about having children one day. Soon, I thought. Depending on how my applications for doctoral programs were received.

We had hiked this trail many times before and had even ventured off the path on occasion. Sunlight filtered through the branches decorated in new foliage and budding blossoms, dappling the ground in splotches of faded color next to the vibrant hues in the shade, turning Prim’s hair to burnished gold.

“So Prom, huh?”

A pink flush spread over Prim’s cheeks. “Yeah,” she said. “I mean, I know I’m only sixteen, but Rory’s a senior so he can go, and—“

“Prim,” I cut her off with a chuckle. “It’s fine. If he asks, we’ll go dress shopping, okay?”

“I could get a second-hand dress, yeah? Maybe go shopping downtown instead of uptown?”

“Sure,” I answered lightly as Prim scooped up a few more dandelions. “You’d look lovely in vintage.”

“Just not retro eighties vintage,” she grimaced and our laughter danced among the trees, startling a few birds from their nests. “I don’t think I can pull off that many ruffles or chartreuse.”

“Hmmm, maybe neon purple,” I suggested with mock seriousness. In response, Prim stuck her finger in her mouth and pulled a face. Then her expression softened and she tucked a few of the dandelions in my hair, the rest in hers. I remembered doing something like this with my mother when I was younger. Not the hiking through the woods, but weaving flowers into fragrant crowns we’d wear while we danced in the woods and Dad bounced baby Prim on his knee or conducted an imaginary orchestra for us.

Sighing away the memories, I took the lead through a narrow section and we continued along the trail. Sometimes we talked, other times we absorbed the sights and sounds of the forest returning to life after the long winter.

Prim spotted a robin’s nest and pointed excitedly, digging in her bag for her camera as quietly as she could manage. We watched as the mother fed her young and Prim managed to snap a few pictures. Then she crept quietly off the trail into the brush to get a different angle, her feet silent, just as I taught her. She picked her way back towards the trail but stayed in the undergrowth, her hiking boots making soft shushing noises. I joined her and we continued.

Meandering through the woods, I kept track of the sun so we could find our way back to the trail while Prim photographed a few flowers. She even captured a grouping of fungus, showing it to me with a mischievous grin.

“Think Peeta will paint these?”

“You should draw them,” I suggested and she smiled, scampering through the woods and snapping pictures of plants to draw later. She wandered further into the brush and I absently checked my watch.

“Whoa,” she said, and I looked up to find her arms spread as though catching her balance. She smiled and shrugged at me. “Ground is a little soft here.”

As I scanned the area around her, warning bells went off in my head. The plants appeared to be mostly dead or dying.

“Prim!” I yelled as she took another couple steps. And that’s when the ground swallowed her.

**XXXXXX**

A scream lodged in my throat. I opened my mouth and nothing came out. Park rangers brought me tea that I didn't drink. They wrapped a blanket around my shoulders that did nothing to halt my shivers. As the shadows grew long around me, I stared into the distance, unable to blink because every time I did, I saw my sister’s smile, radiant in the sunshine before it disappeared, and I watched her stunned face as she fell into that sink hole. Heard her final scream before the deafening silence.

Voices around me talked in low murmurs. I only caught a few words. Sixty feet deep. Body irretrievable at this time. Lucky the older sister didn’t fall in, too. A few stopped beside me and spoke, I assumed, to offer their condolences. Their words meant less than nothing to me.

All I knew was that I couldn’t get to her, couldn’t even see her, so I ran full bore back to the trail and flagged down an elderly couple who went searching for the park rangers to help. I don’t remember how I ended up back at the trailhead, but I sat on the hood of my car, holding a mug of tea as it grew cold, waiting.

“Katniss!” Peeta cried and then he was there, pulling me into his arms. We sat on the ground, with me in his lap and the tears finally came, hot and fast, spilling over his shoulder. His hands ran over my back as he murmured soothing words and rocked us back and forth. Back and forth.

**XXXXXX**

It didn’t seem real. I went to sleep every night hoping to wake and find this had all been some twisted nightmare. If that were the case, then when I woke from my nightmares, I could run down the hall and find Prim, fast asleep in her bed, brush her hair back off her forehead and take a few calming breaths before I returned to my bed where Peeta would kiss away the remnants of my nightmare.

Only the nightmares were just as bad as the waking. I watched her disappear beneath the earth over and over again, a scream of warning stitching my lips shut instead of springing free. I woke to find her battered and bleeding, in a soft lilac Prom dress, pointing an accusatory finger at me only to wake again to the silence of our house.

Sometimes, I woke up alone in bed. The first time that happened, I frantically searched the house and found Peeta in his studio, furiously sketching, eyes red and rimmed with the purple bruises of sleepless nights. Their pain matched my own. I watched him silently that night for a long time before I finally shuffled back to bed alone and stared at the wall. I don’t think he even noticed me there. My feet made no noise on the tile floor, then again, I did everything silently those days.

Peeta tried to talk to me. During the day, he carried on conversations with me as though I was actually speaking. If he was in bed with me when the nightmares started, he shook me awake and held me while I trembled uncontrollably. Eventually he started pleading with me to talk to him. My lips would part and press back together in an imitation of a fish suffocating on the shore. No sounds issued forth.

I tortured myself with what I could have done. Should have done. I should have stopped her, saved her. Never put her in danger. As I lay down at night, I told myself that would be the night that I saved her, bringing this hell to an end.

But the worst nights were the ones when the rats came. Swarms of them that scratched and clawed their way out of the hole that became her final resting place. In my sleep, I screamed at them to get off of her before they swarmed over my body, their claws sinking into my flesh and their horrid, beady, blood red eyes taunting me.

“Katniss, you have to eat,” Peeta said hollowly the morning he returned to the bakery. I had been sitting in the kitchen since two in the morning, my muscles long gone stiff from their rigid pose. Slowly, I lifted my eyes to his. Peeta broke first, heaving a sigh as he placed a heaping plate in front of me and bent to kiss my temple. “I love you, Katniss. Come back to me, please.”

I listened to him walk out to the garage and start his car. After the whirring of the garage door closing ended, I blinked, a pair of tears leaking from my eyes. How could he do this? How could he just walk out and return to his life with such ease? Pushing the food around the plate, I took a few bites, not because he asked, but because my head had started to hurt. Even sitting down, I felt dizzy. When Peeta came home, he had a list of therapists clutched in his fist.

“Just to talk, Katniss. I’m worried about you, and if you can’t talk to me, maybe you can speak with a stranger. Please? She wouldn’t want you to do this to yourself.”

He had no idea. And neither did I, because Prim wasn’t here to tell me what she wanted anymore. But I nodded at Peeta and took the list from his hands, vowing to burn it the first chance I got. But days passed and still, the list remained tucked inside my work satchel.

The rats taunted me. Prim started screaming my name from the depths of the earth. And Peeta sketched late into the night. I surprised myself a few days later by handing him the list back, one of the names randomly circled, and he ran for the phone, making an appointment for me and then driving me to it. I spent the hour sitting in a leather chair, staring at the man’s face as his nose twitched, his teeth poking over his lower lip. He droned on about grief and loss, asking a few pointed questions that I answered with nods or shakes of my head...or ignored completely. When my time was up, I couldn’t remember his name. It was fine. Referring to him as Dr. Squirrel-Face suited my needs just fine.

Once we returned to the house, Peeta stood behind me in the kitchen and rubbed my shoulders, resting his head on mine, whispering to my hair that we’d get through this, somehow. Still tense from my hour of therapy, I shut my eyes against his words, but for the first time since my sister died, I allowed myself to lean back against Peeta, to let his touch relax me.

“I’ll make dinner,” he murmured when he finally released me. “Do you want to go lay down or stay in here?”

I shook my head and stepped away, headed towards our bedroom. But I found myself stopping in front of the door to Prim’s room instead. The door had remained shut those past few days. Or had it been weeks? Pulling the sleeve of my shirt down over my hand, I turned the knob and pushed the door in gently. My breath caught when I was not met by a pack of rats or a gaping hole in the floor. Despite Peeta’s soothing touches, my muscles began to tense again, squeezing painfully under my skin as I listened to the sounds of him in the kitchen and my own ragged breathing. I gingerly stepped across the threshold into my sister’s sanctuary.

Everything was the same as the last time I had been in there. Her bed sloppily made, a sundress and denim jacket discarded on the rumpled quilt. Her closet open with a small pile of shoes scattered on the floor. Framed pictures lined her dresser: Buttercup, me and Peeta, me and Prim, Mom and Dad. About a dozen pictures of her many friends tucked into the frame of her mirror, the edges starting to curl. She had recipes, and pictures for baking and sketching inspiration tacked to her bulletin board along with a couple of movie ticket stubs and a Valentine’s Day card from a friend. On her desk, a fine layer of dust covered the clutter of colored pencils, flute sheet music, and her sketchbook.

Picking up the sketchbook, I wiped off the dust and fingered the corner of the cover. I wondered if her drawings would be like Peeta’s. He had been teaching her, guiding her as she developed this craft, as well as the baking they did together. Would I be able to see a glimpse of her heart and mind in her drawings? It felt almost like an invasion of privacy, though, and unsure if I was ready to look, I carefully set it back down. Redirecting my motions to dust off the rest of the desk, my hand brushed against a small bowl and I tipped the rim to peer at the contents.

Dandelions. Half a dozen dried and shriveled, yellow dandelions. Prim tucking dandelions in my hair then hers...

My already tense muscles clenched into excruciating knots and the room spun around me at a nauseating speed. I couldn’t get the smell of the forest or the slant of the light over her skin out of my head. My palms began to sweat. As I backed away from the desk, my heart pumped furiously in my chest, the beats powerful enough to be painful. It paused then sped up in an irregular pattern. And then came the sound of her screaming as I crumpled to the floor, trembling from head to foot.

“Katniss, what’s wrong? Katniss!” Peeta’s voice reached me from a great distance as I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to banish the memories that would never leave me alone. I’m not sure if I wanted them to leave me alone in that moment. This was all I had left of my sister.

**XXXXXX**

Lost as to what to do with me in that state, Peeta called Finnick, and, unable to reach his friend, rushed me to the ER. I nearly cracked under the strain of trying to keep myself together while my body seemed determine to break me apart. My mind wasn’t helping either. When the nurses finally called my name and led me to an examination room, I frantically tried to keep their hands off me. No one was allowed to touch me except Peeta and Prim.

But Prim was dead and their cold hands felt like the feet of rats, so I fought, giving one nurse a black eye and knocking a tooth loose in the mouth of another. I have no real memory of this. Only the word of Dr. Squirrel-Face to go on. Eventually, that nervous breakdown of mine landed me in a mental health facility. An institution, just like my mother. And I blamed Peeta for that, screeching at him as they admitted me to the sterile white hospital that he was leaving me alone and making me like my mother, nothing but a shell.

It wasn’t true, not really. Those words were born from the loss of my sister who was more like a daughter and the certainty that I was responsible for her death. But those were the first words I had spoken since Prim had died, and after they left my mouth, I held on to the rage and sense of betrayal behind them, even though I didn’t understand the feelings at the time, because rage was preferable to emptiness.

I suppose Peeta and I fixed things between us eventually, but I’ll never get to take back those months of silence, or my thoughtless words. And now, in my darkest moments, I doubt whether I ever adequately repaired the damage I did to us in that time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to abbythebear and solasvioletta for betaing this fic!


	3. Explosions

**Day 3. Explosions**

 

**_Peeta_ **

**XXXXX**

I visited Katniss every day in the hospital. I had lost, in one stroke, the two most important women in my life. During Katniss’ convalescence, I was no better than a zombie, moving aimlessly from one activity to the next, whether it was the bakery or taking care of our home - nothing really mattered to me. The only relief for the incredible loneliness of my day to day life was painting. In that period without Katniss, I covered my studio walls with canvas after canvas of our lives together - Prim in the garden of our small home; Katniss traipsing through the countryside in search of her rare herbs and plants; our make-shift family at the beach; Katniss looking out at me from everywhere, peering at me from behind the film of memory, a face transported from a time when she had been happy.

 

_Sometimes you have to break in half to love someone._

We were broken in half because of Prim. Even now, I became breathless with her absence. Katniss’ love was a necessity and being without her was slowly killing me.

 

However, Prim’s love had been an unforeseen bonus. She had been my friend, my sister, and, to some extent, almost a daughter. Katniss’ single-minded determination to care for her had become my own and now I was left defeated and without purpose because I had failed to protect them both. My life had been constructed around their well-being and now I had a hard time figuring out how to move forward.

 

**XXXXX**

 

Katniss sat listlessly on the verdant grass as I approached, her eyes lost and unfocused. Her hair hung unbraided and limp at her shoulders, as if she hadn’t washed it in days. Her nails were long and full of the dirt she was digging into. I made a mental note to myself to speak to the attendant about her hygiene.

 

She was also thinner than usual, the bones of her face more prominent, making the dark circles under her eyes stand out like giant bruises on her skin. My wife had been beautiful. She’d been strong. She’d been mine once. Now I could hardly recognize her.

 

Katniss didn’t acknowledge me when I took my usual spot next to her and that small indifference, when I spent so much of my waking life thinking of and missing her, inflicted a physical wound on my heart. I reached my hand out to grasp hers but she flicked it away, balling it up into a fist on her lap. _So today it’s anger,_ I said to myself, trying desperately not to take her rejection personally. I focused instead on the pile of dandelions clumped before her.

 

My nose twitched at the sudden and unfamiliar smell of smoke and I realized it came from a small ashtray near her knee. Inside was a lit cigarette, it’s tip crackling as the heat combusted the contents inside, the line of ash and fire traveling up the smooth paper that encased the tobacco. I furrowed my brow at it.

 

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing at the black, worn plastic that held the cigarette.

 

Katniss looked down at the cigarette and picked it up, pursing her lips as she took a long drag before releasing the smoke in rings over her head. “I’m teaching myself to smoke. Dr. Aurelius calls it an affirmation of life,” she said ruefully and I could almost hear the laughter in her voice. “Imagine cancer sticks representing my return to my life,” she laughed mirthlessly at this and the laughter I heard in her voice turned to derision. “I've always fucking hated cigarette smoke!” She picked up one of the dandelion flowers, throwing it in the ashtray and stubbed out her cigarette on the stem, the fluffy white leaves curling darkly inwards from the burning of the fiery tip. She then grabbed the charred weed and tossed it under a pine tree that stood not two feet away from us and I saw, for the first time, the pile of burnt dandelions smoking underneath. Something in the way those flowers seemed to lie, assaulted and discarded with so much violence, made the small hope that I carried in my heart shrivel a bit further.

 

“I brought you cheese buns,” I said quietly, placing the bag before her. “I didn’t think you’d get any of those here.”

 

Katniss glanced at the white spotted bag and I swore I thought I saw the edge of her lips twitch. I wanted so much to see her smile again that any sign of it, no matter how small, caused my heart to soar.

 

“Do you want to try one?” I said, digging the still-warm bread from the bag. “I just made them.”

 

She stared down her nose at it, as if its very existence offended her and I realized my earlier impression had been mistaken. “Maybe later,” she muttered, lighting another cigarette.

 

For the first time since Prim’s death, I became impatient with her. “Can you not do that?” I asked, somewhat more harshly than I intended.

 

Katniss paused, looking at me pointedly before continuing to light the cigarette. “No.”

 

I was taken aback by her abrupt refusal and left speechless, which was probably for the best because I’d need all my cool to process what she said afterwards.

 

“I think we should get a divorce,” she said, her voice devoid of all emotion.

 

“What?” I burst out, unable to control myself.

 

Katniss jumped at the shock in my voice and for once, I was proud that I was able to get something more out of her than indifference. “A divorce. We’re too...different to stay together.”

 

“Katniss…” I whispered and I knew that my annihilation was complete. “You’ll leave here one day…”

 

“How can you go on living?” she asked in accusation, as if I hadn’t spoken. “I can’t...I can’t even breathe without wanting to die and you...you…”

 

“I thought I was supposed to be strong,” I said, feeling irrationally ashamed, for perhaps not falling apart, for not being here with her. “I thought I had to keep it together.”

 

“For me?”

 

“For _me_. For _us_.For _Prim._ ” I closed my eyes, trying to describe my pain without tapping it and scalding myself with it. “I hear the silence...in our house...and I remember what it was like to be happy. I remember what it was like...to have everything…” my voice broke and I reigned it in with all my might. “I had you and Prim and now I have nothing, and I keep thinking, if I can just pull it together long enough, something will come back to me. Something of what we had will return.” I looked over at her and saw something that looked like emotion flicker in those gray eyes that once held my entire world in them.

 

“So you choose life?” Katniss responded, more of a statement than a question.

 

“I choose _you_ ,” I reached my hand out to her again. She didn’t jerk away this time but she did untangle herself gently, her hand resting limply on her lap. “You’re my life, Katniss.”

 

The wind picked up then, the burnt dandelions under the pines stirring to life, the remaining white puffs floating and dancing into the air and soaring up into the sky until they were no longer visible in the glare of the sun. Katniss didn’’t say anything else and I walked away with my heart in shreds.

 

**XXXXX**

 

I parked our car in front of the bakery the next morning, exhausted from the nightmares and the lack of sleep. The silence of our home had become a creature that curled itself around me and suffocated me with its oppression. I’d taken to leaving the house and walking around our neighborhood at all hours of the night, the fresh air somewhat lifting the heaviness that was crushing me from the inside, because I carried that carnivorous python inside of me.

 

I walked up to the back door of the shop, tripping on the step that was a part of the building ever since it was built, before any of us was born. I knew it was there and usually compensated for it in an unconscious way. But today, I forgot. I felt like I was restarting everything, and the memory of my physical world was just beyond my grasp, hiding behind a haze of nondescript mist.

 

I opened the door and flipped on the lights, fully intent on getting everything ready for the day when I came to a full stop. I studied the bakery for the as if it were the first time - it’s gleaming, metal and stone surfaces, the steady ticking clock on the wall, the low hum of the refrigerator motors whirring throughout the room. I looked past the kitchen and made my way slowly to the front, only partly illuminated by the neon lights coming in from the front windows. From the shadows, the door opened and in came Katniss, like the day I met her, healthy and happy, tapping her lip with her forefinger as she searched the display case for something to buy. Prim came in soon after, her blond hair bouncing on her shoulders, a cocky half-smile on her lips. She was wearing the same clothes she was wearing when she died.

 

_She’s dead._

 

I turned and ran out of the shop, unable to breathe and only just making it to my car before I bent over, leaning against my knees to catch my breath. I kept saying their names, over and over, in a mad liturgy that called the memory of everything I had experienced with them down on me like a hail of brimstone. I couldn’t escape it. The vile creature I held at bay exploded to life in my chest, wrapping itself around me to rob me of my every last hope. _Was this what it felt like to lose your mind?_

 

I pawed clumsily at my pocket and fished out my cell phone, dialing Finnick’s number in the dark with shaking hands. After several false starts, it rang, a panicked, sleepy voice crawling across the line.

 

“Peeta?”

 

“God help me, Finnick!” I gasped, unable to say anything more because my throat was starting to constrict.

 

“Where are you?” he said as I heard Annie rustling in the background. “I’ll come get you.”

 

I think I managed to answer him because I later recalled a car and being coaxed into the passenger’s seat. Somehow, I ended up in his house with Annie removing my shoes and tucking me into a strange bed. _At least it isn’t so quiet anymore_. After that, I simply stopped thinking altogether.

 

**XXXXX**

 

_I move through the shiny, unnaturally bright woods, following the sounds of screams as they pierce the silence of the forest. I cry out their names, “Katniss! Prim!” but the sound seems to drop to my feet and I know no one has heard me. I make my way through tangled vines and thorns, which seem to become thicker and more gnarled with each step I advance until I make it to a clearing off the main trail. That’s when I see them both, clutching each other in fear. They are sinking into the ground and each movement they make causes them to sink further. I’m running towards them, as fast as my legs can carry me but it seems no matter how hard I push myself, I am unable to close the space between us._

_As quickly and as horribly as it all began, it’s over. Without warning, the ground opens up beneath their feet. I reach out to them but they are gone. My desperation to reach them turns into grief, then anger and suddenly, the forest explodes and everything including me, is on fire. I scream their names as tree trunks burst into flames, branches sizzle to ash and the whole world around me becomes engulfed in the furies of my loss._

 

I woke with my screams in my ears. Shooting straight up in bed, I struggled to regain control of my breath, which burned through my chest and escaped in explosive gasps from my lips. I grasped the spot next to me, looking for the comfort of Katniss’ body but my hands came up empty and I remembered, in a sickening rush of madness, all the events of the past few weeks. Sweat ran down the sides of my face and I wiped it away with my forearm, mingling with the tears that streamed down my cheeks. Grasping handfuls of my hair and pulling hard, I tried not to howl into the night but I was unsuccessful because I heard the footsteps pounding down the hallway and my bedroom door burst open.

 

“Are you alright?” came Annie’s soft voice like the tinkling of bells after the horrific cacophony of my nightmares.

 

Nodding absently, I didn’t trust myself to speak. I knew that if I opened my mouth, what would emerge would be a sound of inhuman pain. I glanced around the room and briefly took in the classic elegance of Annie and Finnick’s guest room before squeezing my eyes shut again. For their sake, I admonished myself over and over; _I won’t cry...I won’t cry…_

But soon, arms surrounded me and I was doing exactly that. Finnick and Annie rocked me as my grief thrashed me. Nothing made sense except that I no longer wanted to live in a world where Prim was dead and Katniss was beyond my reach. I had been as strong as I could, for her sake, for my family and for myself but on that night, I became empty and realized I would never be strong enough to live my life without her and that realization brought me to the edge of my sanity.

 

**XXXXX**

I couldn’t go back to the bakery after that. Not right away. I even stayed away from visiting Katniss, haunting the rooms of Finnick’s home like a ghost. I thought of Mrs. Everdeen, with irreverent irony, now she had company in the halls of her half-life, the three of us meandering around each other in our grief, never able to really see or understand one another.

 

Finnick brought my paints and canvases and I worked obsessively. At first, the dandelion fields were burnt and destroyed, the meadow of my imagination wilted beneath the dry, blazing sun. I drew Katniss and I, contorted in grief. We weren’t people anymore but spirits that hovered balefully around each other, each needing the other but unable to cross the chasm of misery that separated us.

 

After a time, I couldn’t stand to be silent anymore. The absence of sound that I’d been trying to escape was now taking up residence in my mind and something inside me sought to push it back out again. I searched for Finnick, who was in the kitchen, cutting bright green, red and yellow bell peppers into long strips.

 

“Divorce,” I said to Finnick, startling him so badly, the knife clattered to the cutting board.

 

“He speaks!” he said picking up the knife, checking his fingers as if to ensure they were all still intact. “What about a divorce?”

 

“Katniss.” I clarify, clearing my throat as if cobwebs coated it. “That’s what she asked me for the last time I went to visit her.”

 

“What do you think?” he asked tentatively, turning from the cutting board, satisfied that all his digits were as they should be.

 

“I think she’s out of her fucking mind,” I spat with real anger, the vehemence of my own feeling taking me by surprise.

 

Finnick smiled, nodding his head. “Well, she is the one in the loony house, right?”

 

I glanced at him, ready to bite his head off and tell him to be a little more respectful but the mirth on his face became infectious and I couldn’t help but smile along with him. The emotional chrysalis I had built to protect me from myself shattered and for the first time, the heaviness of the last months lifted somewhat from me. But I was still broken and the thought of Katniss in that institution threatened to suffocate me again.

 

“This is killing me,” I whispered, collapsing into one of the kitchen chairs, the brief glimmer of hope scuttling away from me like the scurrying of startled rats.

 

Finnick stood next to me, placing a hand on my shoulder, the warmth seeping into my skin. I had forgotten how good it felt to actually have contact with another human being.

 

“Listen, you can’t take care of her if you don’t take care of yourself. Take it one step at a time,” he admonished. I listened to his words, searching desperately for the solution to my conundrum.

 

He set a dish down in front of me with what looked like potatoes, eggs and sausages and I felt the pangs of hunger rumble in my stomach for the first time in days. I thought of Katniss wasting away in that institution and almost choked on my meal. But I tried not to lose my appetite again as I thought of a way to get through to her and bring her back home to me.

 

**XXXXX**

 

On that overcast Sunday morning, I dressed carefully, wearing the button-down shirt Katniss had bought for my last birthday. She said she loved it because my eyes picked up the color of the deep blue hue and augmented them, making them blaze with an even more vibrant version of their natural color.

 

I picked up my wedding ring, having taken it off to polish it. I turned it in order to read the inscription, the twin of which was on her own ring - _K & P Always_ \- and slipped it onto my finger, the metal fitting into the groove of my skin which had been created from years of wearing the band. It fit the way Katniss and I fit together, each of us the key that could unlock each other's heart.

 

When I walked the hospital gardens, I found her in the same place, as if she had never left that spot, except instead of burnt dandelions, there was just her digging into the moist earth of the ground. She was humming a tune beneath her breath, a tune I didn’t recognize. I knelt down beside her, trying to capture her eyes. She flinched when I reached my hand out to grasp her chin and my hand fell back as if stunned. Taking a deep breath, I placed the sheaf of papers at her feet.

 

“I’m here to talk to you,” I said with a voice on the verge of cracking. She said nothing, simply staring at the folded pages and I wondered if there was even any curiosity left in her. I was taking a gamble and the stakes were all or nothing now.

 

“I know why you don’t want to come home,” I began. She stiffened at my unexpected words. My ability to surprise her gave me courage. “You think that if you try to recover, if you try to get better, then it proves that it wasn’t your fault that Prim died.” Her sharp intake of breath spurred me on; it was the most I’d gotten out of her in almost two months. “You think that if you choose to leave this place, you aren’t really sorry. In your mind, it's your fault she's dead and anything less than your total withdrawal from life is a violation of her memory.”

 

Her quiet weeping filled the air but I didn’t let it stop me, for I had tears to match her own, “You can’t come home because you're angry at me. I couldn’t join you in your breakdown over your grief. I left you here alone, and, for that, I’m sorry.”

 

“She was my sister,” she hissed. “I watched her die. How could you understand!” she screamed as she clawed desperately before her.

 

I sank down to where her face was almost against the ground. “That day, she asked me to go with you both and I said ‘no!’ Don’t you think I dream, every night…” I choked on my words, “that if I had made another decision, if I had gone with you, I could have saved her? Don’t you know that I loved her too?”

 

Katniss looked at me, her pain so acute that, had I not been trying to fight through my own, I would not have survived the expression on her face. “No, Peeta, it was too fast! You couldn’t have saved her!”

 

I wiped my face, feeling the dirt as I smeared it across it. “And yet it wasn’t too fast for you, Katniss? How can you be so quick to excuse me and yet so hard on yourself?”

 

Katniss sobbed loudly and I saw she carried a beast inside her too, one that may have already suffocated her. “I was supposed to protect her! That was my job and I failed!”

 

“Then we both failed, my love,” I whispered. “If you failed, I failed twice, because I couldn’t protect either of you.”

 

“No!” she hurled at me. “Not you! Never you!”

 

We sat staring at each other across our impasse, and I became despondent. Perhaps I would fail at this too and have to accept that I’d be forced to live this half life without her by my side.

 

I pushed the papers that I’d set down on the ground before her. “These are divorce papers. Just like you asked. Me coming here isn’t helping you...and it’s killing me.” I wanted to tell her that I loved her more than life itself, that I would never be happy again without her. She was the only one I needed and I would be useless to everyone I ever met from here on out. I wanted to beg and grovel but I didn’t want to hurt her with my insistence, couldn’t bring myself to heap those things onto her, because doing so would only be for my benefit.

 

“Shoot straight, okay?” I said, touching her braid one last time before getting to my feet. As I turned, she captured my hand and pulled it to her lips. The feeling of her soft mouth on my fingers made me weak in the knees and I almost could not believe that this moment was real, convinced as I was that she would never leave this place again, the way her mother had not.

 

“Okay. Okay,” she said as she pulled me down and hugged me to her. I could feel her bones through her dressing gown, smell the neglect of her body and I cried, for what we used to be and for what was left of us now.

 

At length, when we’d had our fill of tears, she turned her lips into my neck and whispered, “I’m ready to come home, Peeta.”

 

**XXXXX**

Slowly, after many lost days, she came back to life. We slept together but most of our nights were spent keeping our nightmares at bay. She couldn’t cross that chasm of intimacy right away so I continued to bake and paint. Katniss hiked and studied. We began to frequent our friends again. She finally visited her mother in the hospital, to speak of Prim and to grieve in their own silent, peculiar way. I had brought the news to Mrs. Everdeen when Katniss was too devastated to do so herself, but her mother didn’t truly accept the truth of Prim’s death and mourn for her until she heard it from Katniss’ lips. It was a little death I died that day, watching Katniss and her mother together, but I felt somewhat closer to them both for it. I could say I finally understood them.

 

One day, as the last days of winter receded, giving way to green shoots and new life, Katniss came home to find me planting primrose bushes. At first, she appeared stunned but then sprang into action so quickly, I didn’t believe anyone could move so fast. She leapt into the flowerbed in a rage to pull the plants out of the ground.

 

“What are you doing!?” she screamed as she reached into the dirt, grabbing clumps of earth and vegetation and yanking them by the roots.

 

“Katniss! They’re for Prim!" I cried, battling with her wild hands. "I don’t want to forget her!” Katniss settled immediately, staring at me in horror but I pressed on. “I think about how beautiful and fresh and young she was and I know it hurts, but that’s who she was to me. I want to remember her the way she was.” I uncurled her fists and pulled the plants from her, lowering my voice. “But if you really don’t want them, I understand. I’ll get rid of them.”

 

Katniss’ grey eyes went wide and hollow and I was sure, if I looked deeply enough into them, I would see the true depths of her grief and go mad from it. Slowly, she let go of the plant she was strangling and almost stood to walk away, probably to hide under the covers of her bed. But she hesitated and turned back to me, wrapping her arms tightly around my neck.

 

“I’m so sorry. Don’t stop planting the pr...flowers…” she stuttered before pulling back to look at me. “I’ll never be the same without my sister. But please, don’t stop loving me.”

 

I clasped her to me and rocked us gently. “I couldn’t stop loving you any more than I can stop breathing and even then,” I captured her head in my hands, caressing her cheeks gently, “Even then, I’d probably follow you like a dog for eternity.”

 

“Always?” she asked, her vulnerability eliciting every protective instinct I possessed. I would be her ally, her friend, her lover - anything she needed, no matter what the cost to me.

 

“Always.” I promised, to her and also, to myself.

 

Katniss’ face broke into a small smile, something I so rarely saw in those months, before kissing me, and I almost believed that we might finally be alright.

 

**XXXXX**

 

**_Katniss_ **

 

Peeta and I grew slowly back together. There were still bad days, like the day when Buttercup kept pawing at the door to Prim’s room and I yelled at him before breaking down in the hallway and crying. When Peeta came home that night, he found a sight he’d never seen before; me lying on the couch napping, with Buttercup contentedly curled up on my feet. Or the day I found Peeta planting primrose bushes and screamed first, then asked him to stay with me and love me even though I was broken in a way no one could fix.

 

On the bad days, I found ways to help myself focus and distract myself from the pain. I made lists. Grocery lists, to do lists for work, a list of the flowers in our garden, or lists of all the good memories I had of Prim.

 

But there were good days, too. It took a long time, but eventually, the good days started to outnumber the bad. On one of those good days, I came home from work with great news. After almost a year of consideration, the university had accepted me into their PhD program. Soon after Prim died, they had put my application on hold until I was ready. Their acceptance and my joy over it felt like a huge step, and as I entered our house, I wanted nothing more than to share it with the people I loved.

 

Only they weren’t there. Peeta wasn’t home yet, and Prim…

 

I teetered on the brink for a few moments and started listing my favorite songs. It seemed an ironic thing to do in a silent house. Prim always had music going. Sometimes, she even fell asleep with it playing, and I would have to sneak into her room and turn her stereo off before I returned to bed myself. I couldn’t remember the last time our house was bursting in song.

 

Impulsively, I turned on the kitchen radio, turning the dial until I found a station playing Taylor Swift, something Prim would have played on repeat until the lyrics were indelibly etched in my brain. Cranking the volume, I danced through the kitchen and sang, lifting my voice in the hope that somewhere, somehow, Prim would know that I was finding some happiness.

 

It was a silly notion, but it helped chase away the dark thoughts until Peeta returned home from the bakery, a dusting of flour still caught in his hair.

 

“You’re singing,” he yelled over the noise, his face scrunched in confusion and I nodded. The confusion melted into a brilliant smile as he swept me up in his arms, turning me about the kitchen, before setting me, laughing, on my feet. “What’s this about? Or should I just kiss you?”

 

“Kiss me first and then I’ll tell you,” I teased. It’s something the old Katniss would have said, and the words felt a little rough in my mouth but somehow right.

 

My breath hitched as Peeta pulled me closer, his fingers tangling in my hair and his warm exhales fanning over my lips. He paused, our mouths a fraction of an inch apart, noses brushing, his eyelidshalf closed. He was waiting for me, giving me the power and the choice. Warmth I hadn’t felt in almost a year spread through me. Slowly, we had started to heal, weaving our lives back together one piece at a time. And while we had shared kisses, embraces, and soft caresses…this heat and hunger for each other had been glaringly absent.

 

So as he whispered my name, I heard it. A desperate hunger in his voice, and I felt the familiar pull towards him, only somehow deeper. The radio announcer started talking as the song ended and the station switched to commercials. But I was too focused on Peeta’s lips to care. I nodded, hoping he understood what I meant and closed the distance between us, my arms and his hands binding us together in a tight embrace. We stumbled to the bedroom, refusing to let our lips part for even a second. I was afraid I’d break something between us if I pulled away.

 

Kissing Peeta like that again felt so impossibly good that I didn’t want to stop. So we didn’t. Not when we peeled one another’s pants from our bodies, nor as we unbuttoned shirts and slid them from our shoulders. Not when we tumbled to the bed together, legs tangled. We kissed while his fingers drew soft moans from me that he tasted with his tongue, and while I jerked my hips against his hand and watched the stars explode behind my eyelids. Our lips remained fused when he sank into me, still trembling in release, and as our languid movements gradually grew desperate, seeking something we both thought we’d lost.

 

We found it again that night, in his hoarse groans and my stunned whisper of his name when our lips finally separated to give song to our shared pleasure. So when we fell asleep later that night, hopelessly entwined, with the radio still playing in the kitchen, I no longer feared my dreams.

 

**XXXXX**

 

I sang my way through the rough spots, even when I didn’t feel the joy behind the lyrics; sometimes just voicing them helped. Peeta painted and drew at a prodigious rate. It took me a long time before I asked, but eventually, Peeta showed me the piles of sketches and paintings he made in the period between Prim’s death and my return home from the hospital. Seeing her so young and fresh hurt, releasing a river of tears, but also relief. That night gave me an idea, an idea that required enough focus and work to keep me distracted from the ramifications of what I was offering.

 

Peeta had planted a memorial to Prim in our garden, a place that had become my favorite part of the house, oddly enough. I sang and found the courage to return to the woods, a place where I belonged anyway. Together, we had found ways to mitigate the pain left in Prim’s absence. But while we had healed, we hadn’t done much to recognise the rift between us and how we’d managed to grow back together.

 

“So what do you think?” I asked as we sat on the couch, Buttercup pawing at his toy mouse across the room. Peeta stared thoughtfully at the typed up lists and printed brochures.

 

“Lake Tahoe?” he asked skeptically.

 

“I know it’s expensive,” I said, tucking my hair behind my ear and preparing to launch into my arguments for this trip. “But I think maybe a change, something new...a different lake and a different set of woods. I think it could be good for us.”

 

I picked up one of the brochures and glanced over it, even though I already had every word of it memorized. I could feel his eyes on me, and finally, I dropped the brochure in my lap and handed him one of the lists, pointing out the dates I had already penciled onto my calendar.

 

“It’s kind of an important date, you see. And I thought, since we’ve been doing pretty good, we should take a vacation. And sort of celebrate.”

 

He sucked in his breath as he realized what day I was referring to. “I brought you divorce papers on that day,” he whispered, his words slow and deliberate.

 

“And I ripped them up,” I answered. The papers in Peeta’s hands fluttered to the floor as he held my face delicately in his palms. His eyes glowed with the sheen of unshed tears, and I knew this was the right thing to do.

 

“Okay, Katniss. Let’s do it.”

 

**XXXXX**

_Shoot straight_ , he’d said the day he gave me divorce papers and a staggering understanding of my thoughts. I’d spent months in that hospital with professionals who hadn’t managed to voice so concisely what Peeta did that day. And I’d barely spoken more than three civil sentences to him in that time. He came with a confession that he was hurting and near the edge, too, something that I’d desperately needed to hear.

 

_Shoot straight._

 

They were the same words he’d said to me the morning that I went in to defend my thesis, a reference to one of my hobbies and joys. He’d meant them as a way of telling me “good luck,” but they eventually came to mean so much more.

 

_Be brave. Forthright, open, and honest. Chin up and don’t give up._

 

So I thought it was fitting for me to return to archery and for him to try it with me while we were on our trip. It brought me a strange sense of peace as I honed in on the target until the rest of the world melted away, leaving just me and the arrow. I reclaimed this as I had the woods.

 

Peeta was terrible at it. He had no aim at all.

 

“Stop laughing,” he’d grumbled as we made our way back to our cabin after one very bad afternoon archery lesson. “Not my fault you had a head start on me.”

 

I laughed and linked my hand with his. The pressure of his hand as he squeezed mine told me that he wasn’t really mad at me.

 

“No, I’m just a quick learner.” Peeta made a face at my words. “Besides, I think Dr. Squirrel-Face would not approve of me handling any form of deadly weapon.”

 

“Probably not,” Peeta stopped and turned so that we faced each other, twining our free hands together. “I was thinking. Maybe we should find you another therapist. If you aren’t happy with him--”

 

“I’m fine with him, Peeta. Just taking out my resentment that I need therapy at all on him,” I said with a shrug.

 

“If you’re sure,” he persisted.

 

“I am,” I stated firmly. “Besides, I doubt we’ll ever find a shrink I can get along with.” Peeta chuckled and as we reached the cabin, leaning down to press a sweet kiss behind my ear.

 

“You up for a swim after dinner?” he asked in a low tone and I nodded eagerly.

 

After we ate and changed to swim clothes under our pants and t-shirts, Peeta and I set off for our favorite spot along the lake. A short hike later, Peeta pulled a blanket from his backpack, spreading it out about ten feet from the shore under the shade of a tree covered in late-blooming wisteria vines. I reached up and stroked one of the deep purple blooms before peeling off my clothes and striding towards the lake. We swam and splashed for a time, until Peeta said he wanted to draw for a few minutes before the light faded.

 

I lay on the blanket, absorbing the last rays of sunshine while Peeta’s pencil flew over the pages of his sketchbook. At one point, he caught me staring at the water droplets still clinging to his lashes and hair. He’d donned his shirt again, and it clung to portions of his torso, the fabric damp with lake water that Peeta hadn’t dried off completely.

 

“Care to see?” he asked, jiggling the sketchbook in front of me.

 

“Yeah,” I said, propping myself on one elbow and turning my body to face his. I smiled at his rendition of me with a bow. “I look so serious and accomplished.”

 

Peeta just smiled and flipped the page. My heart lurched at the image of the very tree we sat under. “I think I want to paint this one,” he whispered and reached out to trace a finger down my cheek.

 

“I’d like that,” I tilted my head to take more of his touch. “We could hang it over our mantle.”

 

A soft flush spread over his cheeks, and my belly flipped. Warmth began to build low in my middle. I was formulating a plan to ensure Peeta would paint that picture. Then he turned to the next page and I tried not to flinch at the image.

 

“Katniss,” he said cautiously. “Can I ask you something?”

 

I swallowed thickly, but nodded. _Shoot straight._ We weren’t supposed to keep things from each other anymore. But from his tone, I didn’t think I was going to like the question.

 

“I started drawing dandelions after this day in the garden. A bunch of them had cropped up in the spring, and I had asked you what was the best way to get rid of them without killing everything else. Do you remember that?”

 

I nodded again and sat up, hugging my knees to my chest. I remembered. It was before Prim had died. Before the sight of them sent me spiraling into grief and anxiety.

 

_“Don’t kill them, Peeta. I admire dandelions.”_

_“They’re weeds, Katniss.”_

_“They’re survivors. Hardy and difficult to eradicate. They have remarkably deep, strong roots. And they are not only edible, but actually pretty nutritious. Plus, they bloom in the spring. Everything is always better in spring.”_

_“Okay,” Peeta shook his head at me. “I won’t try to kill the dandelions if you don’t want me to.”_

After that, Peeta did start to draw dandelions all the time. He scribbled them in the corner of notes he left for me, drew them in chalk on the driveway with Prim one lazy summer afternoon, and filled pages of them in different mediums. Everything from Bic pens to oil paints.

 

“They always made me think of you. Strong. Survivors,” Peeta whispered into the evening air, and I bit my lip, holding back the tears. “And I thought you used to like those drawings. But something’s changed.”

 

And finally, I spilled out the story of how Prim had noticed his thing for dandelions and tucked them into our hair the day she died.

 

I’d barely gotten two sentences of the story out before he had me in his arms and on his lap. Peeta’s entire body cocooned me while I waited for sobs, but all I got were a few scattered tears and the steady beat of Peeta’s heart against my palm.

 

When I finished my explanation, Peeta shifted our bodies so we could watch the sun as it set. It was his favorite time of day. And I wondered if, when he added color to the image of the wisteria-draped tree, would he paint it at sunset?

 

A chill grew in the air but not in me. Gooseflesh raised over my skin as Peeta’s hands rubbed over my back. I’m sure he meant the gesture to be soothing, but it was having another effect entirely on me.As the sun dipped behind the trees, bathing the world in soft orange light, I pressed feather light kisses to Peeta’s neck, up to his ears.

 

“I thought you were angry with me and I didn’t know why. Katniss,” there was a slight question in his voice that my hands answered as they pushed his damp shirt up over his head.

 

“I’ve lived through hell and yet you’re still here,” I said to the bare skin of his shoulders. “Sometimes I feel like I’m still going through hell. You stayed even when I meant to push you away.”

 

“Always,” he said, tugging on my chin to get me to look at him, to make me understand how deeply he meant this promise. _You’re stuck with me for always_ , he’d whispered on our wedding night. _I’d follow you like a dog for eternity,_ he’d almost sobbed the day I tore up the divorce papers. And at sunset by the lake, he made one more promise. “I’ll stay with you, always.”

 

I couldn’t wait any longer. I was already burning away from the need to have him inside me, and his words only stoked the flames. His hands trembled as they helped remove my still wet bathing suit and he flung it aside with a boyish grin.

 

“You really want to do this here?” he asked, but he was already tugging on my legs to position me and pulling one side of the blanket over us to hide us from any prying eyes.

 

“Yes,” I gasped out. “Here under the tree you’re going to paint.”

 

Peeta’s hands ran lovingly over me, his lips following in their wake, and I shivered under his light touches, arching my body towards his to gain more of his heat. His skin was still cool from the lake, but as his mouth joined mine, I splayed my hands over the smooth expanse of his back. I felt him warming under my palms in the same measure as the heat gathering between my legs. Peeta’s fingers curled inside me, drawing out moisture as he moaned softly against my lips.

 

“God, I love feeling you this wet,” he whispered as the hand that was not pushing me quickly towards my peak fumbled with his swim trunks. With a soft smile, I ground my core up into his hand and then helped remove the damp garment. It joined mine somewhere in the grass as I rolled us and straddled him, the blanket now tangled over our limbs and my breasts exposed to the cooling evening air. The sky had turned indigo, the sun hidden behind the trees, as I took Peeta in my grip. I slowly lowered myself onto him and watched him bite his lower lip to keep from crying out, his hands gripping my thighs.

 

I writhed over him, chasing wisteria blooms and sunsets and the stars reflected in his eyes. They were bluer than the sky on a summer day, but when filled with starlight and want, they appeared almost midnight. Infinite and overflowing with love. I couldn’t tear my gaze away while his hands drifted over me, an evening breeze that made the ardor grow until I fell into the depths of him and slammed my mouth to his to muffle my shouts of release.

 

My walls still clenched around him and my legs shook as he flipped us, tugging my legs high around his waist. Peeta dropped a hand between us, his mouth raining trails of molten heat over my throat, my shoulders, and my breasts while he rubbed frantic circles over my clitoris, sending me crashing over the edge before I’d recovered from the last. His hips drove into me and he chanted my name like a prayer. I was delirious and greedy, tilting my hips so he rubbed against my front walls. I could feel it when he pulsed inside of me, hips still thrusting, our skin slapping together loudly in the quiet night, and his groan taking me with him once more.

 

“Peeta,” I moaned, biting down on his shoulder with my nails digging in his back while the whole world burst into bloom.

 

We lay there panting, Peeta brushing sweat dampened strands of hair off my forehead. An echo of laughter drifted across the water and we both froze. After a tense moment, he lifted his head and scanned the trees and neighboring areas. Unable to find the source, he shrugged and I started laughing, too, covering my mouth with one hand.

 

When the moment faded, Peeta handed my clothes back to me and we both dressed. Armed with a flashlight from my pack, we carefully made our way back to the cabin. We hadn’t spoken since I’d moaned his name as I came. We would leave this place in a few days, with no concrete plans to return. Life and a dead sister’s bedroom waited for us, and I tensed at the thought.

 

In the days leading up to our trip, Dr. Squirrel-Face had insisted that I was ready to clean out Prim’s room. It was not a task I looked forward to, given my last reaction, but Peeta had promised to sweep the room for any triggers before I set foot in there.

 

At first, his promise angered me, and I yelled at him that he didn’t need to baby me. Even after all that had happened, I still had trouble accepting help. Eventually, I gave Peeta a terse nod and a three word answer to let him know his idea was probably best.

 

As we stood under the shower and rinsed the lake and evidence of our lovemaking from our skin, I felt myself slipping a little at the mere thought of cleaning out and getting rid of Prim’s things. So I made two lists in my head.

 

Those things of Prim’s that I knew I could never part with. And all the things I loved about or needed from Peeta.

 

**XXXXX**

 

Our life wasn’t always sunshine and rainbows. How could it be? We existed with a dark hole in our lives, one that nothing could ever really fill. But I started to believe that he had been right the night I broke down in Prim’s room. We’d make it through somehow. We could face anything together. Things could be good again. And they were for a time, but I had no idea how wrong I was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to abbythebear and solasvioletta for betaing this fic!


	4. Howls

**Day 4. Howls**

**_Peeta_ **

**_Four Years Later_ **

“Hmm...that’s nice…” she murmured as I ran my hands along the length of her back.

I brought my lips down to her ear and whispered, “Do you like that?” The aroma of her shampoo mingling with her own special smell made me heady with a sudden rush of heat that almost robbed me of reason.

“Very much,” she said before picking up her head to look over her shoulder at me. “I don’t see how this can be part of your birthday present. I should be giving _you_ a massage.”

I pressed her muscles further, which became more pliant beneath my fingers, careful to straddle her legs without sitting down on her as I worked. I rolled my knuckles into the small of her back, eliciting a hiss of pleasure, before I responded, “It’s not the massage, but what comes afterward that’s my happy birthday.”

“Is it really, now?” she asked huskily, bucking her hips upwards so that her bottom ground impatiently against my groin. I slapped her bare cheek lightly, becoming more excited with every moment I had her beneath me.

“Patience. You’ll get what you’re looking for soon enough.” I said this playfully as I let my oil-slicked fingers glide over the curve of her bottom, dipping between her thighs, spreading her legs slightly apart. I had to adjust my position somewhat, so that one knee was between her legs but I still kept myself under control, massaging her cheeks, perhaps a little bit harder than I’d done with the rest of her. When my hands moved to her thighs, she gave a whimper of protest which made me smile, and I let my hands run up to the heavy curve of her bottom again, kneading it. Her moans of pleasure were more than my system could handle and I knew I would not make it down to her calves.

Moving to kneel between her now splayed legs, I pulled her hips slightly upwards and touched her wetness. She was ready for me and this made the throbbing between own my thighs almost too painful to endure. I leaned over her, kissing her shoulder before sinking into her. It caught her by surprise but instead of protesting, she bucked backwards again. Holding myself in place with both hands on either side of her, I plunged into her and reveled in the beauty of her back, shiny with oil, beneath me. She would always be the most beautiful woman I’d ever known, and she was mine.

I slowed down, taking my time, drawing out those delicious moans of hers that belonged only to me, for those sounds told me she was nearing her own release. I had a sudden desire to look at her and pulled out, earning a mutter of protest.

“Turn over,” I said gently as I helped her onto her back. I kissed her, capturing her clear grey eyes and holding their gaze as I settled between her thighs and sank into her still warm depths again. We had sex in every way - especially the last few years, when Katniss seemed to revive like a plant coming back to life and was more interested in physical intimacy again. But nothing compared to laying face to face with her, kissing her as I rocked her upwards, watching her every move, listening to every sound she made as she fell apart.   It was more than just sex with her, just like being married was more than marriage, living with her was more than life. Even after all these years, I still felt like I did that day in the bakery, trying to entice her to stay a little longer before she disappeared into the wind.

“Peeta…”she began and I knew she was close. She gripped my shoulders, moving in time with me - and I felt myself reacting to her frantic breathing, her head tossing, her mewls and moans. She was soon gasping and shouting as her back bowed beneath me. I reached between us to touch her, spurring her higher, her nails scratching at me until the last wave rippled through her. I quickened my pace and caught up with her, my release shuddering through us both.

I lowered myself slowly onto her and felt her wrap her arms and legs around me in a cocoon of warmth and satiation. Her fingers splayed through my damp hair and her lips left tiny kisses along my temple and cheek. It was bliss and I wondered briefly if there existed a person on this earth who felt for another the way I felt for Katniss. Was it normal to be so attuned to a person that their every pain and pleasure became your own? Was I really a separate person from her or were we two halves of a whole, who had wandered the world alone until we stumbled onto each other?

I rested my head between Katniss’ breasts, letting her have her way with my blond curls. She played with them often, usually leaving a mop of disarray on my head when she was done. But that didn’t bother me. Her fingers soothed me and her proximity made all those small existential crisis to which artists were given melt away.

She stirred, causing me to look up at her in question. “What are you doing?”

Katniss gave me a mischievous grin as she gently disentangled herself from me, to which I responded with a groan of protest and an attempt to catch her and bring her back to me. However, her sinewy body slipped easily out of my grasp.

“Come back,” I mumbled against the now cooling pillow.

She smiled down at me as she threw on one of my t-shirts. “Nope. Can’t. I have to set up your birthday gift.”

“I was already enjoying my birthday gift!” I said petulantly as she went briefly into our bathroom to wash up. Upon her return, she barely avoided capture when she came to leave a small peck on my cheek, her dark hair brushing against me like the tip of a fluttering bird’s wing.

“Give me a few minutes,” she said as she slipped out of my reach and left the room.

I lingered in bed, thinking of nothing in particular before curiosity got the best of me and spurred me to seek out my wife and my gift.

**XXXXX**

She’d made breakfast, which she was setting on the table when I entered the kitchen. I could feel her pride at having done everything so well all by herself, down to the centerpiece of fresh flowers. She’d picked dandelions again - she wasn’t avoiding them anymore - and that filled me with more hope and happiness than anything else she could come up with.

Without warning, I picked her up and swung her around in circles, covering her gasp of surprise and laughter with a full kiss. When I set her back in place, she swayed slightly, though whether it was from the spinning or the kiss, I couldn’t be sure.

“What was that for?” she asked breathlessly, when she was was finally steady on her feet.

“No reason except that I love you,” I said as I watched her from my place at the table where I was now seated. “So, where’s my gift, woman?”

“Now who’s impatient?” she asked as she poured the orange juice and sat to the left of me. She’d made bacon, eggs and homefries but also french toast, strawberry shortcake and a fruit compote.

“You went all out!” I laughed as I scooped a spoon of strawberries and whipped cream, savoring the burst of tangy sweetness.

“I did,” she said as she took out a small, white box, decorated with an orange bow. “Here,” she said with shaky hands. “I hope you like it.”

Careful not to damage the box or the bow, I opened it and peeked inside. It was the empty plastic holder for her birth control. I must have been the picture of confusion because Katniss laughed, and even though I learned to never underestimate that lovely sound, it did nothing to lessen my confusion.

“Well,” she started nervously, “I’m being considered for tenure and…” she closed her eyes and moved her lips as if talking to herself. “Remember that talk we had, about kids?”

“Which one? We’ve been talking about kids a lot lately,” I said, though my heart started to race. Katniss had been resolute about not starting a family, especially after what happened to Prim. We only discussed it theoretically, though deep down inside, I started to pine after the fantasy of being a father to a child who looked just like Katniss, especially now that we had passed the 30-year old milestone. Only lately had those discussions moved into the realm of possibility.

“It doesn’t matter,” her chest rose and fell, and I knew she was dying of nervousness. “I’m ready.”

I straightened in my chair. “Ready? You mean…?”

“Let’s do it! We aren’t getting any younger and frankly, if anyone deserves to be a parent in this world, it’s you,” she said excitedly.

I wanted to jump on the table and punch the air. A baby! I already saw two or three in my mind’s eye but in the middle of my joy, something gave me pause. I pulled her to sit on my lap, taking her hands in mine. _Shoot straight_. “Katniss, you would make an amazing parent also. This isn’t just for me, is it?”

A pained look crossed her face. “For a long time, I thought that I would make a terrible mother. I couldn’t take care of Prim and she died.” Her shoulders sagged and I ached for her. However, she lifted her lovely eyes, clouded but not haunted as they had once been. “I’d like another chance, you know, to take care of a child. _Your_ child. I loved Prim so much and I know I’d love our child very much, also. That has to count for something, right?”

“That counts for everything,” I said. “But you understand that her death was not your fault, don’t you? You have to make that clear in your mind, because sometimes, the things we believe in our minds become far more real than any truth. It was an accident,” I said, rubbing her arms as she shivered from something other than the cold.

With a flicker of doubt in her eyes, Katniss nodded. “Of course.” She waved her hand as if to brush aside the argument, taking up her discussion of before, “I want to do this. I want to have a baby with you.”

I grinned idiotically - it was what I wanted most out of life. Yet as she clung to me, her doubts haunted me and I hoped that she would truly forgive herself one day, not only in word, but in deed. I hoped she would grant herself this absolution, one that comes from being free of self-hatred and guilt and finally seeing herself as she really was.

**XXXXX**

It was a Friday afternoon, like any other. I was returning home from the bakery, cheese buns and warm rolls sitting like old, familiar friends in the passenger side of the car. I chuckled to myself when I thought of all the hundreds of cheesebuns I’d made for Katniss over the years, how they had all shared the same fate.

Finnick and Annie would be coming by for dinner, and Katniss was handling the cooking all by herself. Normally, this was not an issue if it was just the two of us, but she always felt extra self-conscious when cooking for others, even though it was not the first time Finnick and Annie had joined us for a meal. Katniss was this intoxicating mixture of brashness, irony, strength and vulnerability that never failed to set my blood on fire. I suddenly wanted to hurry home and have her one more time before our guests arrived, which would throw her entire cooking schedule in disarray. I shrugged mentally, not really caring.

The phone in the cup holder rang, the sound of chirping birds filling the cabin of the SUV. It was the ringtone I had set for Katniss’ calls. It never failed to startle me how my thoughts of Katniss could lead to her materializing out of thin air.

Changing lanes carefully, I picked up the phone, holding it to my shoulder as I steadied the steering wheel. “Hey!” I answered, my stomach flipping at the first sound of her voice after a day away from her.

“Peeta, have you exited the turnpike yet?” she asked breathlessly.

“No, but I’m close. Why?” I asked, glancing in my rearview mirror at the traffic hurtling past me.

“I forgot to get the wine. Can you go by the shop and pick up a few bottles?” she asked and I could imagine her dashing across the kitchen, getting things in order. “I’m just not sure what to put with the venison…” she trailed off as I heard the loud clatter of metal followed by a string of colorful expletives. “Sorry...I got home later than I thought from work…”

I chuckled to myself. “Don’t worry. I’ll be home in no time and help you, okay?”

I heard Katniss take a steadying breath through the phone. “Okay. I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she said with real feeling and I heard every nuance and every subtext in that statement.

“Well, let’s not find out, okay? I’ll be home soon,” I was momentarily distracted by cars honking ahead of me and groaned inwardly. I was hitting rush hour traffic and it would only take me that much longer to get home to her. “Oh, and Katniss?”

“Mmm…?” she asked.

“I love you.”

“I love you t-” I didn’t get to hear the rest of her sentence. A sustained squealing of tires grew behind me, drowning out Katniss’ words, before I perceived the powerful impact. I was surrounded by a burst of light, the sound of grinding metal, multiple explosions, and a howl of grief so loud, it permeated the entire living world. For a brief instant I thought I saw myself shattered and bleeding in the midst of mangled car parts. A flash of Katniss in our kitchen appeared before my eyes, filled with the sounds of boiling water and sizzling herbs, while she sat crumpled on the floor, screaming into the phone, howling my name, _Peeta! Peeta!_ Then I hit my head and what was left was only darkness.

**XXXXX**

I wake to excruciating pain. The sky is bright and warm above me and every now and again, I see bobbing heads that block the light of the sun - a red-haired man with a trimmed beard; a blond woman with a nose ring working furiously over me. I feel their hands on my chest, pinching my nose, forcing air down my throat. I choke on something viscous, tasting of iron and struggle to breathe. When it becomes an unbearable burning, I begin to recede. The thought enters my mind... _Peeta, you’re dying_...but I push it away, clinging to the fire in my skin, the excruciating drowning of my lungs. _I’m not ready, not ready!_ I hear crying in the distance, my name being called. _Katniss! Katniss! Don’t let me go!_

I’m fierce, perhaps prolonging the agony unnecessarily but I hold onto the pain, knowing that pain is life and I want to live more than anything else. But something more powerful than me pulls me away and I can almost hear the detachment, feel the process of disconnecting. Suddenly, I’m no longer prone on the ground and choking. I turn my head to see overturned cars; charred, smoking metal randomly littering the pavement and me, laying on the ground, blood running out of every natural opening in my body and some that are not. I look behind me to see gentle tendrils of light connecting where I float to where I lay but they are weakening. I grasp at them, intuiting that if I hold onto one, I won’t float away but they flow through my fingers like the warm running water of the brook in Lake Tahoe so many years ago.

Soon the web of iridescent light dissipates and I watch the red-haired man bark at the woman. She scurries to fetch a metal box and I recognize it as a defibrillator. Someone is calling to me, just behind my shoulder, telling me _Come, it’s time_ , but I’m not ready. I refuse to go.

As the charge surges through the body beneath me, a flash of the magical web explodes from that broken version of me and, with relief, I let myself be yanked back downwards but it is momentary and disappears. I try to approach again, try to come back to the pain, to life, but it’s no use. After something like time passes, the man shakes his head, looks at his watch and writes something down on a chart.

In that moment of disbelief, I shift my objective. I have to find Katniss. She should be at home. She should be making dinner for Annie and Finnick and waiting for the wine. That’s it. Then something snaps and I am immersed in life again. I’m careening in the car, back to our home that morning, where I’d made love to Katniss at the most ungodly hour, my birthday, Lake Tahoe, the institution... _No please, I know what’s coming_...Katniss’ breakdown, Prim’s death... _but I wasn’t there_ …

But Katniss was there. Is it possible that I’m seeing things through her eyes also?

Wedding, meeting Katniss, every stupid fight and beating at my mother’s hands, Katniss’ mother’s breakdown, her father’s death, my father’s sad, ineffective eyes, grammar school, learning to ride the bike, to walk, to crawl, to breathe...every second of every moment, every thought and every feeling flashes through me, so quickly I can’t keep up. Some of those feelings and events are not mine; they belong to Katniss alone but they are there too and I have no explanation for that. And sometimes, it’s better that certain memories race by. But some moments, I want to linger. I fall in love with Katniss in reverse and it is glorious and painful and melancholic and joyous all at once and in that moment of departure, I have never felt more alive.

**XXXXX**

_Katniss! Katniss!_

My mind is a beating drum with only one rhythm. All I can think about is Katniss. I want to see her. At the moment, I can’t see around me - everything is blurry. There’s someone in this strange space with me, a woman who is amorphous, friendly and luminous. She’s someone I know but I can’t recognize because my vision is blurred.

"Who are you?" I call out to the mists that surround me.

A soft, familiar feminine voice answers me. “You’ll realize who I am when you are ready.” She is full of kindness and benevolence, a purity I sense instinctively. “But we need to go, now, Peeta. Your time here is finished.”

I suddenly lose my patience. “I can’t go yet. I have to see Katniss.”

“Katniss is where she needs to be. It’s you who are not progressing to where you must be.”

This person’s sweet speech does nothing to quell my determination. I hear her sigh before acquiescing. “Just think of her and you will find her,” she says, her voice nothing more than a breeze against my ear. “You are so very attuned to her already, more than anyone could have anticipated.”

I ignore the cryptic words and close my eyes. There is a powerful sense of humor in addition to the kindness from the woman next to me, almost a flavor that I can taste in the air. “You will soon learn that the mind is everything. Whatever you envision can be constructed and made to come to pass. Now, where is your Katniss?”

I focus on the distant sound of her voice, more a memory than the actuality and soon I am in my home. I don’t question how I’ve gotten there, and the woman next to me chuckles warmly, her blond curls and voluptuous figure becoming more defined. “You are almost ready. When you realize you have died and exist in this different plane, you will see me better and move on.”

I ignore her commentary and move through the living room, filled with people. There are Katniss’ university people, Dr. Willis and Dr. Frank and her graduate assistants. Serving drinks from the kitchen is Johanna Mason, Prim’s once babysitter and Katniss’ friend, with an expression that is both heavy and serious. Finnick stands off to the side, red-eyed with a very pregnant Annie, rubbing her swollen belly, swatting tears that drip from the corner of her eyes as she speaks to Phillip and Rhea, my brother’s wife.

I turn to watch my father in a corner, talking quietly to Rohan while my mother leans her head against the double glass of the patio door, staring absently at nothing at all with a face carved from stone. The eyes reflected in the glass are furious, but unfocused, and I’m overwhelmed with a childish love for her.

It’s all unbearable and I want to run to each of them and tell them that I am here, I am alive. Because even though they don’t say so, I know that they are here for me.

I think of Katniss again and I am compelled to move to our bedroom. Reaching the door, my hand slides through the wood as if I were as corporeal as smoke. This, more than anything else, unsettles me and I step through the wood with a growing sense that I will not wake from this dream. I glance to see the blond woman has followed me and the invasion of privacy gives me pause. However, I don’t react because at that moment, I see Katniss and now my every sense is filled with her.  

She lies curled on her side in a fetal position on the bed, her hands crossed over her knees. Buttercup sits like a watchmen at her feet. As I approach, the cat’s tale begins to switch back and forth, the yellow eyes boring as if seeing me. This encourages me and I instinctively reach out my hand to pet him. However, the cat’s hisses fill the room and I pull back, the sudden movement startling the cat, who escapes under the bed, where his muffled mewls, perhaps of fear, can be heard.

Katniss does not notice or appear to care. She’s shivering and staring at the wall where pictures of us hang - a motley, asymmetrical collection of our lives, held together by one theme - that we are together in almost every single picture. I love staring at that wall and thinking of the circumstances of each photo. Now Katniss stares at them and the hollow look of her eyes makes my knees buckle.

She doesn’t speak or move but tears run unchecked down her face, landing in fat droplets on the bed. She’s dressed in black and her hair is braided and neat but there is something wild in her eyes that comes close to looking deranged, a look I’ve only ever seen once before - when Prim died.

For the first time since the start of these strange events that landed me in this condition, I feel the weight of what has taken place fall on me. Katniss’ pain convinces me that I am either dead or trapped in the worst dream I’ve ever had. I suddenly want it to stop. I can’t take her pain. I can handle my own - I can suffer indefinitely. But Katniss’ pain undoes me and I sit next to her on the bed, willing her tears to stop as mine begin to flow freely.

“Katniss,” I groan, “Baby, don’t cry. I’m here.” Reaching out to touch her tear-stained face, I concentrate on my hand not passing through her and I almost feel the tender soft skin of her cheek as I pass the back of my fingers over her cheek. Her eyes shift and I feel her stiffen, which makes me pause in my caress.

Remembering my companion, I wipe my nose and ask, “Can she feel me?”

The blond lady comes into view. “Yes, she can, but only as the wind glances over the surface of a leaf. She will sense you more than anything, depending on how sensitive she is and how much she believes in your existence.”

This gives me pause. Katniss is a scientist, through and through, and at best, an agnostic on matters of the soul. I turn my attention to my wife again.

“Shhh, don’t cry,” I whisper. “I exist. I’m real.” I concentrate on her cheek again, this time cupping it, moving my finger slowly as if to wipe the moisture away. This time, Katniss raises her hand and touches where my hand rests, a hiccuping sob bursting through her lips.

“Peeta?” she whispers in a voice so small, so vulnerable, I want to wrap her up in my arms and put her in a safe place where she’ll never be hurt again.

“I’m here, sweetheart,” I say, choking on my words.

“Peeta?” she asks again in her broken voice. I watch her as she slowly raises both hands to her head and moans in pain, her dirge lancing me through my heart, robbing me of my breath, my will to continue existing.

I want to wake up. Now. _This is a nightmare_ , I say to myself, going so far as to pinch myself, even slapping myself in the face. But nothing changes. Katniss is still rocking in pain and I’m a pathetic poltergeist who can do nothing for her but watch her as she falls apart.

“She thinks you’re gone for good. She does not believe in the persistence of the soul.”

“I don’t care!” I bellow, taking my horror and anger out on this apparition who won’t leave me alone. I climb into bed behind Katniss and hold her as best as my phantom arms will allow. “I’ve got you, Katniss. I’ve got you,” I whisper sweet nothings as I caress her hair, though I don’t always feel those soft, dark tresses. I concentrate hard on the solidity of her beneath me and feel Katniss visibly relax. It’s less about touch than comfort and I will every feeling of strength and love to cocoon and sustain her.

“I did this to you. It’s my fault and I’m so sorry,” I whisper as I weep, attempting to kiss her, with the same uneven results. However, when my lips caress her neck, I feel the shiver run through her and I am convinced, even if she does not understand, that she knows I’m there.

The apparition thankfully leaves and I stay with Katniss into the evening. Johanna and Annie come to check on her, undressing her when night has fallen and tucking her into bed. She does not sleep that night - not really. I hear my name in the whimpers of her half-sleep, embedded within the monstrous grief that pins her in place and gives her no relief. I focus all of my energy on comforting her, on making her feel me next to her and finally I become exhausted, drifting off to sleep with her.

**XXXXX**

When I regain awareness, it is sudden and complete. One minute, I was unconscious, the next moment, I’m back in the mist, searching wildly for Katniss’ body next to me. I glance around me, still hoping that everything that had happened till now had been a dream but this hallucination is persistent, determined to destroy me. I remember Katniss’ pain, hear it beyond this twilight land where I now find myself and long to follow its song until she is in my arms again. I sense the presence of my companion nearby so I talk to the air.

“You want me to believe I’m dead, yet I sleep. Why would I need to sleep?” I ask defiantly. I’m angry and the anger makes me feel suddenly heavy, like I’m moving through molasses.

“Your mind still believes the body is still alive. You will feel hunger, long for sleep, and generally behave as if you have a body until you fully acclimate to your new condition,” she explains patiently. I look down at myself and notice I am wearing the same clothes as when I left for work that fateful morning. My hands appear corporeal but I also saw them passing through the bedroom door earlier. I’m a mist but I appear solid to myself.

“So I’m dead?” I ask warily, the mist around me clearing slightly.

“Yes, Peeta. You’re dead. Your soul still hovers in the mortal plane but you are dead. When you are ready, you will rise upwards and leave this place behind.”

“I need to see Katniss,” I interject, filled with apprehension and ready to leave that place and join my wife once again.

“You will,” the specter said. “Travel here is a matter of the mind. I’m going to take you somewhere now. I warn you, though. The place where we are going is often very hard on the newly deceased. Be prepared and stay focused on your own feelings.”

I nod, my focus really only on Katniss. In the blink of an eye, I’m inside a large church and recognize it as St. Alosius. That would have been my mother’s doing, having been a practicing Catholic for most of her life.   I had discussed cremation with Katniss, the idea of rotting in the ground being repugnant to me but I had never done anything concrete to bring that about. How could I have known that I’d be dead in my thirties?

Rows and rows of solemn faces fill the church, heads attached to the endless black attire, like lint puffs on a large black comforter. I see my friends and family, their pain rising up like a giant tidal wave suspended in air, ready to crash down on me. I know that if I excavate there, I will find blackness beyond what I have ever experienced. There is only one mourner I worry about and search for her in the front pews. She sits alone and the line of her shoulders and back tell me that she sags under the weight of her agony. Her suffering fills me with an anxiety that does not allow me to sit still.

I nod in the direction of the coffin, a giant white bullet closed to the public, no doubt because of the condition of my body at the time of the accident. The priest speaks but it sounds like bees buzzing in my ear. I am by Katniss’ side, her face weary and tired from her restless night. I place my hands on her, attempting to brush away a strand of hair, the proof of my intention in the barest displacement of tiny tendrils at her neck. Katniss raises her hand to touch the spot and I want nothing more than to drag her out of that horrible, closed space and take her to our bed, to make love to her and comfort her, to make her feel good again. I touch her face and her eyes flutter closed, more tears streaming down her face.

“You feel me, I know you do,” I say to her. “I exist and I’m not leaving you alone. I’m here.” I choke on my own feelings. Katniss’ face crumples in agony, her sob filling the empty space in the church. I look at the host of mourners in accusation. “Why won’t anyone sit next to you?” But knowing Katniss, she was probably sick and tired of the company and wanted the pew to herself.

I sit with her throughout the ceremony, following the mourners to the cemetery where the ground has already been cut open to admit my body and add it to the pantheon of the dead who have been shoved deep underground. I hover near Katniss, watching with pity for all the other people in my life who are now actually sorry that I’m gone. But it’s always Katniss who draws me back, only Katniss who remotely matters to me. As in life, so in death - I can’t let Katniss go.

**XXXXX**

**_Katniss_ **

_Today was your funeral..._

I stare at the drying ink and then rip the page from the leather bound journal. I shred the hateful words until they are nothing but scraps and fling them to the floor. I’ll clean them up later. Maybe. My feet carry me to the one room I always feel him. He’s in the heavy scent of oil paints and fresh canvas stretched over wood frames. Running my hands over the bristles pointed skyward, waiting for their owner to return and turn them into dancing beings that bring light and life to the world.

“I can’t do this. I…why should I write to you when it feels like you’re still here? But you’re not. And Dr. Squirrel-Face…he thinks I shouldn’t write to you at all. Just write to that infernal book. Use some ‘Dear diary’ bullshit like I’m fourteen and dealing with a crush or when my parents will extend my curfew. But…I can’t even do that. You were the only person I could ever trust, really trust, with my thoughts. Sometimes, I think you knew them before I did.”

I scoff at myself and stare at a half-finished canvas. Draping wisteria in succulent shades of purples and undertones of blue. It isn’t our tree from Tahoe. That painting hangs in our living room. This painting is of blooms from another place. Reaching out a finger, I trace the flowers, wondering if there was another layer of color he planned to add to it. Then I search for the shadows, the concealed dreams and mystical elements he always hid in his paintings.

I run a finger over some of the vines, awed by the textures he created. Then I drop my hand and step back. One step. Two. Three. I can’t see it. Maybe he didn’t do it with this one…Maybe he didn’t have the chance.

This is probably the kind of thing my shrink wants me to write down in that stupid book. A book won’t bring Peeta back to me. It won’t change what happened. Won’t make it better. Except, Peeta would want me to try. So I return to the kitchen table and snatch up the hated diary, lug it back to his studio and sit cross legged on the floor before the weeping wisteria.

_Dear Diary, I buried my husband today. And I’ve never felt so lost or alone, even with the droves of people who came to mourn him._

_Whenever I looked into Peeta’s eyes, I saw hundreds of silent worlds, locked away in his mind. I always loved watching him paint, watching him release those hidden worlds. Sometimes I could see myself in them. As if Peeta had made a permanent place for me in his subconscious or in his soul. That sounds silly._

_There were days when exploring one of those worlds was the only thing that got me out of bed, kept me going. The possibility that there was more to this life than the crushing emptiness left in Prim’s absence. We were a family…and now I’ll never know what other worlds he’d imagined. Just one more thing to add to the list of what I’ve lost._

“No soul is permanent.” The air around me shifts. Not in any current or movement, but in mood. It feels…saddened. It’s not something I understand or even believe. Spirits in the air? What nonsense. “You’re not real.”

Cold dread runs through me, a vise on my lungs, and my hands begin to tremble.

“Your mother was there today,” I announce to the whispering air around me. Then I put pen back to paper.

_His mother was there today. I wanted to slap her and tell her she had no right to mourn him. Not after all the things she said to--_

I take a shuddering breath and leave that thought hanging. Cross it out in violent streaks of black ink that wobble with my hands. Peeta will know what I mean. And those events aren’t mine to give to the shrink.

Shoving the journal away, I stare up at the painting, tilting my head and there, I see it. A shadow almost in the shape of two figures running, extended arms holding blankets as capes. I can almost hear Prim’s laughter in that moment.

The memory makes me curl on my side, cheek pressed to the cool tile floor, knees bent up and hugged to my chest. Shadows change. Time lengthens them into fingers that curl in my hair and caress away the teardrops that leak from my eyes. One. Two. Three.

The room darkens and I push myself off the floor, head pounding and heart aching. Shuffling to the kitchen, I gulp a glass of water and then lean against the doorframe leading to Peeta’s studio and survey the place. And it’s a tickle. A whisper or a sigh, but it draws me back to the diary, opening it to a blank page. Words words. Where are these words coming from? My hand jerks across the page and a shadow demands that I read it.

_I’M STILL REAL. ALWAYS._

A mournful howl fills my ears and chills me to the bone. When I realize the dreadful sound is coming from me, I shove myself away from the table and pace. Spasmodic sobs wrack my body, an attempt to expunge whatever torture this is that my mind or the drugs have chosen to exert over me. Every muscle in my body tenses as I try not to dissolve into screams. I hold it in and keep moving, imagine myself clinging to the edges of the cracks forming across my heart. I can’t break this time. There’s no one left to pick up the pieces.

I am not sure how long I pace. Hours maybe, with lungs heaving but no tears leaving my eyes. I think I may be fresh out of tears at this point. Eventually, I make my way to our bedroom, falling onto the mattress fully clothed and waiting for sleep to take me.

It never does. At least I don’t think it does. My eyes itch in the morning and I think I must have slipped into some kind of hallucination. I thought there was a shadow that followed me yesterday. A feeling or a glimmer of hope or disease. Whatever it was, I felt it climb into the bed and stay with me all night. Someone held my hand.

Maybe I do need to ask the shrink to adjust my meds.

Breakfast is a chore. I end up gulping down half a cup of coffee that tastes like it must have gone stale ages ago. We don’t drink coffee. Never have. Just tea. But this was something we kept on hand for guests, and after the night I had, I think I could use the kick.

The phone rings. Dr. Squirrel-Face’s secretary. Calling to confirm my afternoon appointment…

**XXXXX**

_Dear Diary, I am not crazy. I know what I felt. But the shrink is crazier than me and so here I am again, scribbling in your bullshit pages and shaking because whatever drug he’s stuck me on now, it isn’t working. This wouldn’t happen if Peeta was here. He always researched every drug name that passed Dr. Squirrel-Face’s lips. Side effects, usage, how it was affected by my favorite wine. If you stood on your head for an hour, would it keep the blood rush headache at bay or make it worse?_

_Peeta looked out for me, always. Especially when I didn’t think I deserved it. It was what we did. Protected each other. That smug little squirrel wonders if losing my sister could land me in a psycho ward, what will I do with this? What an idiot. He thinks that he got me through my first trip down crazy lane. But it was Peeta. Always Peeta._

_So it’s selfish of me to wish he could take care of me now. Now that he’s gone because..._

I flinch and brush the tickling cobweb from my shoulder. Maybe I am crazy.

I glance around the room, searching for the shimmering shadow in the air, barely noticeable unless you look at it from the right angle. Then I shake my head and stare at the diary pages while the words swim and my mind dashes from one thought to the next.

_Because of me._

Peeta is dead because of me. Yes, someone hit his car, but he would have been able to react, maybe even avoid the crash altogether, if he hadn’t been talking on the phone with me and had instead been focused on the road.

_Don’t drive while distracted._

_It should be obvious, but Peeta never thought to put himself over me. The police said it was lucky no one else died, although several of the injuries were severe. I nearly scratched the man’s eyes out when he said that. Don’t tell Dr. Squirrel-Face. An outburst like that, even the possibility of one could land me right back in the facility, a place I can’t bear to go again. Not without the hope of Peeta waiting on the other side. Or swooping in to bring me home when their methods do more harm than good._

_It’s all my fault._

I slam the book shut on the words and the pain that the truth of them brings. Turning my back on it, I go into the kitchen, putting the kettle on so I can have a mug of tea before I have to go to work.

Work. Today is my first day back since…

I shake my head and focus on small things. Little tasks to get me through the day. Annie calls while I pour the steaming water over the tea bag. I tell her that I’m fine. Still seeing the shrink, taking my meds. And yes, I’ll call her when I get home from work.

Things shouldn’t be this way. I don’t need a babysitter.

Is it strange that I feel the shadow all around me? Everywhere I go, whatever it is seems to follow me. At times, I think I feel a fingertip on my cheek or my lips, a caress over my back. And I have to tell myself fifteen times an hour that it isn’t Peeta. Even if it feels like him.

Peeta is dead. Cremated and his ashes buried in a stupid coffin his mother insisted on six feet under the traitorous soil that first took Prim and has now claimed Peeta, too.

As an added reminder to myself, I cut flowers from our garden after work – canary colored daffodils that jitterbug in the breeze – and take them to his grave. Weeks or months? I cannot be sure, although the grass has taken root and flourishes in almost blinding hues.

Kneeling before the stone, I trace the word that belonged to Peeta. The only person allowed to give me that word. That promise.

_Always_

And now I’ve made him break it. This isn’t something I can do alone.

The graveyard isn’t far from the woods. Our woods from before Prim died. The trees adjoining the cemetery belong to those woods. The place we used to picnic and once made love under the canopy of trees and stars. He called me a woodland goddess there and insisted that he be allowed to worship me.

Peeta said things like that all the time. Things that would threaten to overwhelm me with the intensity of his love for me, if I didn't feel the same way about him.

There’s a storm approaching and the wind whistles through the pine boughs, rustles the leaves. Thousands of silk skirted ladies of the forest announcing the arrival of rain. I smell it fresh on the air. A promise of a clean start tomorrow.

“Peeta,” I call to the sky. Why do we always look to the sky to speak to the dead? I never understood. We bury the dead in the ground. Shouldn’t we look down? He had the sky in his eyes, though. “Peeta.”

Kneeling in the tall grass, I feel it. Even here. Or maybe especially here. It can’t be Peeta. It’s just some fake mutation of him. Some twisted apparition born of the wreckage of my heart.

But I swear I feel Peeta’s arms around me. His voice in my mind.

_I’ll stay with you. Always._

It’s an illusion. A dirty trick. I can’t have him anymore so why do I try to keep him? My wails join those of the wind and I clench my hands over my temples, nails digging into my scalp. Maybe physical pain will remind me that I am alive and he is dead. Whatever this is, it isn’t him. And it isn’t real.

My voice is hoarse before I stop. There’s a stabbing pain in the general vicinity of my heart. When I finally fall silent, I am filled with...emptiness. No shadows or lurking spectres. Just my own misery.

**XXXXX**

**_Peeta_ **

I’m only killing her.

I watch as Katniss howls before my grave and I realize what a fool I’ve been. The force of her screams are enough to push me back from her.

“I’m sorry.” I repeat over and over, my path finally becoming clear and no amount of defiance can change it. “I said I’d never leave you. But for your own good, I have to.”

I rise from my place behind Katniss, stepping heavily away, wanting nothing more than to cling to her, even if she never acknowledged my existence again. To be close to her. To love her, even from a distance. To know that she will be alright. That would be enough.

“At least, I got to tell you that I love you. Each day was always better than the last. Even the bad days with you were better than the best days I experienced anywhere else.” I say, over her sobs and the grief that set her to rocking on her haunches.

I turn then to join my companion, whose figure has become almost discernible. I guess that’s what acceptance looks like.

In a moment, the woods are gone and so is Katniss - the woman of my heart and soul. I may be a spirit now but I carry my love for her inside of me like the most solid, three-dimensional thing in the entire universe. I leave her behind but it is only for a moment, for my love is of infinite density and eternal persistence. It is more real to me than death, heaven, or hell, whatever those look like. I’ll move on to the next plane, if that is the natural order of things, but nothing will ever break in half the love that tethers me to her. Even now, as I move upwards, her voice is still in my head like a bird with a song that will never stop singing.

**XXXXX**

**_Katniss_ **

_Dear Diary, My shrink would call this progress. How can it be progress to wander the house searching for a shift in the air that was nothing but a figment of my mind? To say the most outrageous things to the air in the hopes I can repeat the change in currents, in the_ feel _of the air around me that seemed to come from without instead of within?_

_Whatever it was, it’s gone now. I should be happy. Progress. So why do I feel as though I’ve lost him all over again?_

In sleep, I find myself trapped in the woods. Sometimes I see the lake where he and I once swam naked together. Or the clearing where the three of us would picnic after a long hike. Then I remember that these woods betrayed me and took my sister from me. That’s when the wolves come. And the rats. An old standby from the time after Prim passed. It’s almost comforting, in a way, to wake screaming for the rats to get off of me. Off of her. This pain is familiar.

But then I turn to shake Peeta awake, wondering why he didn’t notice I was having a nightmare. He usually does. And I remember that he’s not there anymore.

On the worst nights, the wolves aren’t quite wolves.

They pace in the woods as I watch, helpless, while the earth swallows the only two people that I’m certain I love. But before the rats swarm over me, before I can even reach the hole, the wolves begin to howl. Only the mournful wail of wind and beast sounds more like Peeta. And I can’t differentiate the noise from my own screams when I wake. The sound from my throat in eerie harmony with Peeta’s cries that still resound in my head.

After a week of this transformed nightmare, I give up on sleep and wander back into Peeta’s studio, hoping for some comfort here. Dr. Squirrel-Face suggested I start slowly going through Peeta’s things. Cleaning out as a way to physically show that I am moving forward.

I snort as I finger the porcelain ballerina figurine that Peeta kept on one of the shelves. One of the few things of Prim’s that remains five years after her death. Smug Dr. Squirrel-Face had demanded an inventory of everything of hers that I kept and why. He’d made a face when I’d mentioned the ballerina figurine, a gift from our father. But I couldn’t bear to part with it. Peeta had carefully placed it on the shelf and smiled at me.

“There,” he said. “It’s in my studio. So you didn’t really keep it.”

Tonight, I ignore the weeping wisteria, still perched on the easel. Instead, I flip through several canvases leaning against the wall. Paintings he planned on resurfacing and starting over. Others he had stalled on or hadn’t had time to finish. One by one, I pull them out, propping them up on tables and against the wall until I’m surrounded by Peeta’s creative process.

It’s almost too much to bear, so I sit in the kitchen and sip a mug of tea. Write in my diary.

_Peeta spent five years telling me that it wasn’t my fault. Even had me almost convinced most days. But without his arms to reassure me, I begin to wonder...I caused his death. How can I continue to believe her death wasn’t also my fault?_

I make plans to meet with Annie for lunch. Or go shopping with Johanna. And then I cancel them, hiding behind illness as an excuse. After awhile, they stop asking. Then the phone stops ringing. What do you say to someone who has no idea how to speak to you anymore? I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t know what to say to me either.

_Dear Diary, I have become a ghost in my own life, haunted by a remnant of a feeling. Dr. Squirrel-Face would probably give me some psycho-jargon babble about the shadow being a manifestation of my subconscious desires for Peeta to still be alive and with me. Whoa there, doctor. Easy on the genius theories. But does it have to mess with my head so horribly? Why couldn’t my brain conjure a polite ghost who respected my boundaries and doesn’t torment me with things I can’t have? Oh right…because I killed my husband._

_I wanted to stop feeling it, the constant reminder of what I lost when you died that night. And now that it’s obeyed my wishes, I can’t seem to stop thinking about it. Or wishing it would reappear. Anything would be better than this loneliness._

“What do you think, Peeta?” I ask the air around me. More often now, I find myself standing in his studio wearing socks and one of his old pajama shirts, hair a tangled mess from failed attempts at sleep.

I run a hand over the craggy cliffs, clouds skidding across the sky, half obscuring the light. Then I eye the colors. Something bright. Something obvious. A banner to announce my presence. Carefully, I dip the bristles in fawn-hued paint and apologize to them. Peeta was the artist. I was the music, he often said.

Usually, he’d work with music weaving through the studio. Tonight, I paint in silence.

I take a deep breath and concentrate on memories. How did he do this?

“Right here? Do you think?” The first brush stroke is the most nerve wracking. But once I start, I can’t seem to stop. Curves and gathered clumps of bark, crooked lines for branches. The paint smears a little because I am impatient, unable to wait for one layer to dry before moving on to the next.

I add a tree on the edge of the cliff, a bright red scarf floating on the wind, lost by an unseen woman. Fuschia flowers to a field of tall grass at sunset. Bright orange fish leaping from the rippled water at the base of a waterfall. A lavender bird soaring over a portrait of me reclining in the grass of our garden, eyes closed with the sun bathing my face in tones of gold. My additions look terrible and nothing like they would if Peeta's hands created them. A tree I attempt to add to another canvas is smeared so badly I give it up for lost, but as I lift the canvas and turn to discard it, the image reaches me. A blurred face. A shadow.

Setting the painting back down, I stare at the figure, then take my fingers to it, rounding out the edges and turning the leaves into a gauzy wrap. Add a little black with feather light strokes. There. It’s me.

_Now I’ve painted myself as I am now into your world. They say we live in our minds anyway. And if that is what is real in life, then I guess this is my reality. A woman disappearing into grief and guilt and her dead husband’s paintings. You were my hope. My own dandelion in spring. And keeping myself here, in your creations, keeps me calm._

When he was alive, Peeta believed that art transcended existence, and he included music as an art form. They were channels that we loved each other through, used to keep each other going. So I sit on the floor of his studio and sing to his paintings. If there is another plane of existence, I've sent messages in his language. And now in mine.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We owe a huge thank you to solasvioletta and abbythebear, who have been working tirelessly to beta this fic and slogging through the heavy material with us. Thank you, ladies. Your help and friendship is invaluable.


	5. Tongues

**Day 5 of 7: Tongues**

 

**XXXXX**

****

**_Peeta_ **

I hear her voice in my head. It’s extraordinary, the throaty cadences, the notes soaring high, then sinking and breaking, like a buoy in water. I’ve emerged from the mists and find myself seated in a plush, capacious armchair in a cozy study, but it is Katniss I hear in my head - harmonizing, rising, calling to me, so strongly, I almost turn around and re-enter the mysterious tunnel through which I came. I shake my head, trying to focus on my surroundings and her song recedes, but only just. I become aware of someone sitting in a small loveseat adjacent to my chair so I glance to my side and catch sight of the apparition who has been trailing me since my soul freed itself from that wreck.

 

With a start, I recognize my companion.

 

“Delly!” I exclaim in shock.

 

“Peeta,” she smiles indulgently, taking my hand in hers. The Cartwrights and the Mellarks had been friends since before my brothers and I were born. Delly and I had spent an entire childhood playing together, even going so far as calling each other brother and sister with those who did not know us. We dated briefly in middle-school and the memory of her was filled with so many firsts, including first girlfriend, first kiss and first great loss. She was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder as a junior in high school and just before graduation, she passed away.

 

She is as I remembered her - shiny blond curls that hung loose around her shoulders. She had the sweetest blue eyes that were the same color as Prim’s but lacked the exotic almond shape that Prim shared with Katniss. Delly’s were wide and round. Open. Happy. That’s what I have associated with Delly since we were children.

 

_“Shhhh…” Delly said tiredly when I came to visit her in the hospital room. “I’m okay with it now.”_

_“It’s not fair,” I said angrily, unable to control the resentment that, of all people I knew, it was Delly who would get sick, Delly who would…_

_“Hey, it’s the next great adventure,” she chuckled softly. “And no worries, I have a funny feeling you won’t be getting rid of me that easily…”_

 

And now she was here. She’d been my guide all along. I was suddenly ashamed for the way I’d treated her.

 

“Delly, I’m so sorry…” I begin and rise from where I was seated, pulling her up in the process. I hug her to me, lapsing into the familiarity we’d shared from when we were children. “I didn’t know it was you…”

 

She laughed, pulling back to look at me. “You’ve had other things on your mind.”

 

Remembering Katniss brings her melancholic song to the foreground of my brain again. It is similar to having a tune stuck in your head, except that I don’t tire of the sound of her voice when everything else goes silent. I listen, overwhelmed with feelings of longing and loss, and I can’t be sure if they are my feelings or the ones that belong to Katniss’ songs. Delly looks at me quizzically, and I feel my face break into a sad smile.

 

“I can hear my wife singing. She’s so sad,” I say, suppressing the sudden urge to cry on her behalf.

 

“You are hearing a projection of her aura - her soul. I suspected as much when I came to you but now this confirms everything. You are soul mates.” Delly nods, almost to herself, before she releases me to pace up and down the study. I take a moment to look at the decor - it belongs to a more tropical environment, the chairs and tables made of bamboo with wicker woven strongly along the joints and corners. Thick fronds of waxy leaves rise up from pots set strategically around the room. A window gives out onto an open veranda and beyond, the sea laps at the shores with small, gentle waves, the water the deepest blue I’ve ever seen.

 

“My home,” Delly stops, spreading her hands towards the ocean. “I’ve always loved the sea.”

 

I nod, remembering how much Delly loved to swim, how she seemed to blossom in the summertime, like Prim. Her laughter tinkles through the air and for the first time, I have the feeling she is reading my mind.

 

“You are so new! You haven’t learned to control your thoughts, so anyone can read them,” she responds happily.

 

“Well, that’s an inconvenient gift,” I reply ruefully, my thoughts returning to Katniss. “Tell me about this business of soul mates.”

 

Delly shakes her head in disbelief. “Aren’t you the least bit curious about your surroundings? Usually, new souls want to see everything and wear themselves out with questions.”

 

“I do!” I burst out. “But I just can’t help but worry about Katniss. She’s all alone. You don’t know how much she’s suffering now. Do you think I can check in on her?” I ask, glancing involuntarily behind me, as if the path back to Katniss lay there.

 

Evading my question, she says instead, “Well, I’ll be able to explain it all but you need a little information about how things work here first,” she continues. “I’m your guardian, so I will be giving you the grand tour.”

 

“Like a guardian angel?” I ask in astonishment.

 

Delly chuckles again, her mirth infectious, “Something like that. I’ve been following you around since I became able to do so. You have to learn to do everything here just like you have to learn to do things on Earth. Mind is everything,” she says, tapping her temple with her forefinger. “As you learn to imagine things, they will be created and these things will become your reality.”

 

“Can I imagine Katniss here with me?” I ask seriously, the dirge in my mind rising and falling as Katniss’ grief rises and falls in her.

 

Delly raises her finger, wagging it back and forth dramatically. “You can’t just manufacture or transport a soul. That’s a little bit beyond our abilities here. You can call forth an illusion of her, but I strongly suspect that a mirage will not be enough to make you happy.”

 

“No,” I respond firmly.

 

“You see,” she walks slowly out onto the veranda, the wind meandering gently into her hair, and I am compelled to follow her, “Every soul creates their reality, their home, as it were. We can travel to other realities, just as you are here in my home now, but your home will be whatever you create with your mind. It will be one of the first things we will do here.” She turns towards me and takes both of my hands in hers. “Creation belongs to your imagination, just like traveling and summoning - everything depends on what you envision. The better, more pure soul you have, the more beauty you will invoke in your surroundings. Now, close your eyes and imagine the most beautiful image you can conjure, the one that makes you feel the most at home.”

 

I close my eyes and for a moment, my home with Katniss appears as she moves through it. I am both exhilarated and saddened by the memory of her because what made my house a home was Katniss and she is not here with me now.

 

“Still your emotions and filter them!” Delly admonishes, squeezing my hands. “You’re all over the place. Focus on a place that makes you feel at home and imagine it in detail.”

 

My home. Katniss’ garden. My paintings and sketches. These are home to me. But images descend, and I am captivated by the vibrancy. Lake Tahoe. The hills on the slopes of Cascade Lake, the towering mountains of the Sierra Nevada in the background, covered in ice and snow even in early summer. The falls. The evergreens. An amalgamation of the Appalachians, where we grew up. I can smell the pine in the air, feel the cool mountain wind sweep down the peaks. I hear Delly whisper “Yes” as the air vibrates around me. When she squeezes my hands again, I know it’s time to open my eyes. What greets my vision takes my breath away.

 

“Delly!” I shout happily.

 

“It’s your home, the way you envisioned it,” she laughs as I spin in place and take in the very panorama of my day dream.

 

“It’s incredible!” I shout, listening to my echo bounce across the hills, dissipating into the open air.

 

“You are truly an artist, Peeta. Everything you imagine, you have the ability to recreate. This is just a manifestation of your gift. Your imagination is alive!” she said, clapping her hands together. I looked out onto the landscape and see my home nestled in the trees, on the shores of the lake. I walk towards it, eager to be reacquainted with the home I’d shared with Katniss, but Delly pulls me back.

 

“There are better ways to travel here,” she says coyly and I recognize the glint in her eyes, the one she always got when we were young and meant _Let’s play_.

 

“What do you have in mind?” I laugh.

 

“Well, how would you like to get across that ravine?” she points at the small brook that cuts the hill in half, separating us from the house.

 

“Fly?” I quip. However, Delly raises one eyebrow, and I know she is not joking. “Can I just do that?”

 

“You can do anything you want!” she laughs again. “Just envision yourself doing it and you will.”

 

I turn towards my house and concentrate on the elements of flight that I know of, from watching birds flutter to imagining Superman taking off, laughing at the image of myself in tights and a cape. Delly chuckles next to me and I remember that she can read my thoughts. I refocus on lifting off and soon I’m in the air, tumbling clumsily until I imagine a more graceful arc. There is nothing like it - the wind flowing through my hair, over my skin, the breath-taking view of the lake below me. I’m enchanted and watch Delly follow with more control, dipping and nosediving, squealing with delight. We’re six years old again and we dance like leaves on the wind. I can’t remember ever feeling so free.

 

Delly lands gracefully before my front door, whereas I tumble and land flat on my back in the grass. I stare up at the blue sky, the laughter dying in my throat. This is the kind of day Katniss would love. Large, billowy clouds floating across the immense sky, the sun warm but not oppressive, the brook burbling at our feet.

 

But the thing that freezes me in place is the weeping wisteria tree on the hill just above our home. It is an exact replica of the one Katniss and I had once painted together when I’d taught her how to paint.

 

_“C’mere,” I stand and gently pull Katniss in front of the stool, gesturing for her to sit. She only hesitates a second before taking the seat. “You tried to teach me how to shoot. I can try to teach you how to paint.”_

_I grab a chair and set it behind the stool to sit in. My legs spread, bracketing hers, our thighs touching as I reach around her and draw her gaze up to the canvas._

_Selecting a brush, I place it in her hand._

_“We’ve got some flowers to grow,” I whisper against her neck and she shakes her head frantically._

_“No, Peeta. Not this one. I don’t want to mess up this painting.”_

_I slip a finger under her chin and tilt our bodies and heads so we’re facing each other. “This painting is for us. There is no way on earth you could ruin it.”_

_No, no way to ruin it at all_. If only Katniss knew how amazing our painting was. The tree before me now was a perfect version of the one we’d painted together that day. Seeing the tree with the deep blue and purple blooms elicits tears and soon I’m on the grass, weeping for the tree and the memory of us together. The moments flow over me and Katniss’ voice changes in my mind to one of nostalgia and remembering. After several minutes of this, I wipe my eyes with my forearm like a child. It is clear this place is a mash-up of all the wonderful places we’d been together, and I feel guilty enjoying it without her. With a touch of embarrassment, I pull myself together and glance at Delly, who waits patiently at the threshold of my home.

 

“She’ll be here one day, won’t she?” I ask hopefully. “That’s why everything that’s here includes things she would love. I could have chosen anything…”

  

Delly practically skips over to where I’m laying and sits down next to me, legs crossed like a little girl. Only now do I notice that she is dressed all in white, a kind of light, linen tunic over loose, pants and sandals. The grass and dirt have no effect on the crispness of the material.

 

“Katniss will be here when her time comes. When I mentioned you were soul mates, I wasn’t being metaphorical,” she straightens up. “I want to do something with you. Stare at me and let your eyes blur.”

 

I furrow my brow in confusion but do as she tells me. Suddenly, I see a halo of light emerge around the outline of her figure. It’s nothing short of breathtaking - iridescent colors that are dominated by pinks and yellows dancing like butterflies in the light. I have the feeling I can see the joyful nature of her character the way I could taste her sense of humor. I reach my hand out to touch the laughing pixies.

 

“You’re beautiful!” I laugh, my fingers disappearing in, what appears to me to be, an emanation of her life force.

 

“It’s my aura,” she confirms. “And now that you can see it, you will never be able to unsee it again. With time, you will be able to recognize others solely by their auras and not by their physical appearance, which is a construction of your mind,” Delly tugs at my hand and I look down to see my own glow, the pattern of light dominated by warm oranges like the shade of a summer sunset interspersed with a rich, vibrant green that swirl like eddies in a pool. I flex my fingers, studying the patterns.

 

“That is your aura, Peeta,” she whispers with a kind of awe. “This is the definitive evidence that you and Katniss are soulmates.”

 

I stare at my hand, watching the dance of colors, the way the orange and green link and unlink in a kaleidoscope of rhythm that is mesmerizing to watch.   Delly continues her explanation, “Katniss’ aura and yours are synchronous. They vibrate at the same frequency and your colors and patterns compliment each other.” Delly shakes her head in wonder. “Soul mates are somewhat rare. No one is sure how they are made but it is clear to me, from the way you hear her at this very moment, singing to you across the spheres, to the way your spirit world reflects her preferences to the harmonic resonance of your auras.” She puts her hand to my cheek and I feel the warmth of her generous heart through the palm of her hand. “This is why you are having such a hard time letting her go.”

 

I’m suddenly very tired. I look out over the mountains and everything is alight with an energy that makes each color more alive, every shaft of light more vibrant. It’s all suddenly too much and my eyes flutter closed. “Just a few minutes, Delly,” I whisper as a profound exhaustion overtakes me. She lifts me up from the grass and leads me into my house, which is a replica of the one I shared with Katniss. I walk through the open corridor, passing the large, airy sitting room with giant canvasses propped against the wall. The stone and marble kitchen with the island where Katniss and I always sat to eat, even though there was a perfectly suitable table. The study, full of Katniss’ botany and plant books, her dried plant samples - leaves and flowers on pins in display cases. Delly takes me to the bedroom Katniss and I share and indicates the bed. I want to ask why I am feeling tired if I no longer have a human body but I can not articulate the words past my exhaustion.

 

“Though you are spirit, you are still a form of matter and energy. You will need periods of recuperation, though they will become less frequent. You are new to all of this so comprehending your environment will wear you out. Rest now,” she sweeps a flop of curls from my forehead. “When you wake, you only have to call out and I’ll appear.”

 

I nod, my eyes drooping closed. It’s only as I lose consciousness that I realize that in all the time Delly has been speaking to me, she hasn’t been moving her lips.

 

**XXXXXX**

 

_I hear Katniss’ screams, even from far outside our home. Suddenly, I’m running, listening as she gasps and calls out my name. I race through our house, searching each room frantically, the sound of her cries surrounding me from all sides. As I come upon her study, her cries become a gurgling, choking sound, something so horrible, I feel nausea rise up in my throat._

_“Katniss!” I cry out. A heavy thud thunders through the house and I search among the furniture to find her writhing on the floor, a giant python wrapped around her. I pull at the beast but his tongue, as long as his body, snaps at me, leaving a swath of fire where it makes contact with my skin. Katniss is turning pink, her eyes bloodshot, and I leap onto the snake, heedless of the pain to me. Soon it is me who is being strangled, while Katniss now lies unconscious. There are others around me now - children who lay limp on the floor in the same condition as Katniss, a boy with blond hair like mine and a girl who is the spitting image of Katniss._

_I look into the eyes of the serpent as my chest burns, crushed in its deadly embrace and everything soon fades to black._

I wake with a start, sitting straight up in bed. I reflexively look to my left but I already know Katniss is not there, sleeping next to me. I imagine holding onto her as she coos in my ear, smoothing the tension of the nightmare away. When I search for her song, it suddenly floods my mind, a low, refrain of loneliness and loss. I grasp the pillow on her side of the bed and clutch it to me as if it were her body.

 

“I’m in heaven.” I whisper to the pillow. “But it isn’t much without you.” I say this in response to her song as it continues uninterrupted.

 

“At least I have your voice,” I whisper, letting it sway me as I rock the pillow back and forth in time to her forlorn melody.

 

**XXXXX**

****

**_Katniss_ **

****

_I dream of Peeta’s fingers linked with mine, the sensations intense and overwhelming. I can feel him lying next to me. A sweet breeze blows over us, carrying the scents of jasmine blossoms and the forest. A lake shimmers at the bottom of the hill on which we recline and birds free-wheel in the sky. Ice capped mountains tower in the distance. He whispers to me and I laugh before everything goes misty and then black and I drift in oblivion for a time. When I wake, I look around me, confused. Someone has drained the color from our house. I lay in bed, curled into Peeta’s warm body and cling to his shirt._

_“Peeta,” I whisper, listening closely to the hissing sounds that fill the hallways. “Peeta wake up. Please, wake up.” I frantically shake him until his limp form rolls enough for me to see his blue lips and sightless, bloodshot eyes. I scream and leap from the bed._

_“No, no, no, no, no,” I chant mournfully while the hissing grows louder. Thoughtlessly, I turn and run from the room, race down the hallway to Prim’s bedroom, throwing the door open and yelling for her to wake up. Yanking back the covers, I stifle another scream with my hand. Her face, identical to Peeta’s in death. Wide, sightless, bloodshot eyes and blue lips._

_The hissing is right behind me, I feel a tickle of a forked tongue on the back of my neck and swat at the disgusting sensation as I race from Prim’s room, desperate to escape this nightmare. I fling open a door and come to a jarring halt._

_“No,” I whisper. “Not possible.”_

_I am in a child’s room. Two toddlers in two small beds. I tentatively reach a hand out and caress the blond curls of the boy, choking on my grief. He’s dead, too. I know it without turning his face, his body terrifyingly cold and still. I don’t bother checking the dark haired girl in the other bed. Somehow knowing what I’ll find. I squeeze my eyes shut and whirl around to flee, but I can’t._

_I am trapped. Mirrors surround me on all sides and I stare, horrified, at my reflection as my tongue slithers out of my mouth. Forked and deadly._

I sit upright with Peeta’s name on my lips, body covered in sweat. Then I hug my knees to my chest and tangle my fingers in my hair, trying not to hyperventilate or vomit. Rocking back and forth on the bed, I tell myself over and over:

 

“Not real. Not real! It was just a dream.”

 

It started so wonderfully. A universe of color and intimacy with Peeta. I haven’t felt that close to him since my shadow disappeared that day by his grave. And then the dream turned into something despicable. I have turned into something despicable.

 

My feet carry me almost immediately to the studio. I stand in the middle of the room, arms crossed to ward off chills that linger from my dream. Slowly, I turn, taking in the dozen or so canvases that I’ve added to or altered. They look exactly the same. I don’t know what I’m expecting. Those strange words in my journal were written by my hand, if not by my will. Whatever mania possessed me to paint doesn’t quite feel the same way. So this was probably fruitless.

 

A faint _meow_ sounds and I look down to find Buttercup, winding his way around my ankles, his fur soft and comforting against my skin. I reach down to touch him and he darts away, springing up onto the worktable, still strewn with sketches, a couple of the altered paintings propped up on the surface. Buttercup turns before settling on top of the papers and focusing his yellow eyes back on me.

 

“You felt it, too. The shadow after he died. I know you did.” He swishes his tail as if to suggest he has no clue what I’m talking about. Stubborn feline. “I saw you swatting at the air and mewling like you used to do. To get their attention. Peeta. And Prim.”

 

His ears perk up and he mews again at the sound of their names, two of the few words, other than his own name and the word _food_ , that he understands.

 

“They’re dead, you stupid cat. We’re not crazy. But they’re dead and never coming back,” the words taste foul and sound hollow as I turn and leave Buttercup to stare at the paintings.

 

There’s little chance of me getting back to sleep, so even though it’s only 3 A.M., I shower and get ready for work, boot up my laptop and check my university e-mail. Then I grade a couple student papers. My actions are mechanical, and although I get the work done, I feel…detached. Like those days you drive your car on autopilot and can’t remember exactly how you got to your destination once you arrive.

 

I watch time tick by, swallow my small line of pills and head out to work. When I finally return home that evening, my body drained and limp, I sit in the driveway with my car still running and stare, only half-seeing, at our neighbors. I watch the father lift the daughter and toss her, squealing, pigtails swishing. The mother kneels by the azaleas with the son, pointing out something to him, maybe caterpillars or other insects, as he claps his hands in joy.

 

_Dearest Peeta, I thought I had today under control. I was so proud of how I held it all together through an endless afternoon. Then I came home and I’m still not sure how I let the day unravel so quickly. I suppose the answer is that I never had it together to begin with. I’m just going through the motions of my life, waiting for the actions to have some kind of meaning again._

His studio has become my sanctuary. When staring across the kitchen table at empty chairs becomes too painful, like it did tonight, I eat dinner with the paint and canvases. An entire gallery of messages, an attempt to reach across the void or the miles. To let him know that he’s still with me. And still wanted. I continue to add touches to them, even though I don’t believe these messages reach anyone other than my battered psyche.

 

I haven’t told the shrink about my new hobby, too afraid he’ll tell me that it’s unhealthy and I need to stop. I can’t stop. Can’t let it go. Can’t let Peeta go. And in some way, this is also a connection to Prim, who’d begun to explore art with Peeta as well, and is present in the oil images almost as much as I am.

 

The lists aren’t working anymore. I can’t seem to focus on them long enough to finish, or they somehow morph into a list of regrets or things I’ve lost before I realize what I’m doing. The lists only make me feel worse. I turn to my calendar, something I used to be fastidious about maintaining, and flip the pages, looking for answers.

 

It gives me a flicker of hope and I drive to a pharmacy in the middle of the night, buying a couple different brands, just in case. The hope is slim at best. We didn’t have much time between his birthday and the accident. And I know that stress or medications could be the reason I haven’t had a period since before then.

 

Sequestered in our bathroom, I stare at the test, thinking of the dead children in my dreams, waiting for the second line to appear, double check the instructions. Twenty minutes later, a solitary line remains. Not pregnant. Discouraged, I store the unused tests under the sink and lay on the couch, staring up at the painting hanging over our fireplace. The test could be wrong.

 

_Dearest Peeta, We wanted children one day. A family. It was something we wanted before we lost Prim. And after, we knew we could never replace her. But having children, moving forward, was a sort of promise to ourselves and to her that we’d live our life well but never forget her. I won’t lie to you, I haven’t exactly been dealing with this well. If there were nothing else, I think I might lose it. But there’s this one last thread. I seem to be waiting for that last thread to either lead me somewhere or to be cut. Peeta, I’m scared. I don’t know if I can do this without you. I’ll probably be a shitty mother. You wouldn’t want me to say that, but it’s the truth._

Not pregnant. Not pregnant. Not pregnant.

 

They all come back negative. And then nature finally catches up and gives me the last sign, cutting the thread forever. Every last piece of Peeta has been stolen from me.

 

_Dearest Peeta, My love. I don’t know what to say. We won’t have a family again. Not ever. I’m so sorry, Peeta. We both wanted this and then Prim was gone and I broke in half and couldn’t give you what you so badly wanted. Not until it was too late. Maybe if we’d had more time. I will always regret not getting the chance to see you snuggle a tow-headed infant or listen to you coo an off-key lullaby before insisting that I handle the singing. I couldn’t give that to you and now that you’re not here anymore, it doesn’t matter. Except to me._

My additions to the paintings grow more frantic. Fuzzy blue dandelions, scattered wishes, in a panel of abstract shapes, one of Peeta’s attempts to expand or test his style. A sailboat on a lake with a lonely figure at the bow. A man with sunshine curls. I am compelled. Consumed.

 

At night, I sleep on the couch. Or rather, lay on it. Because I can no longer bear to inhabit the bed we shared. I am tortured with the memories between its sheets. Some that make sense, and some that don’t. Fantastic landscapes that seem familiar but are no place I know. Slithering snakes and mangled metal. Nights spent with Peeta.

 

No longer able to tell when I sleep and when I wake, nightmares and life merge. Smeared just like the version of myself I added to his painting. The dreams and nightmares feel more real than the day **.**

****

**XXXXX**

**_Peeta_ **

****

“I thought heaven was a happy place?” I ask Delly as we move along the path of the small stream, a sliver of water dividing two hills.

 

“Well, this isn’t quite Heaven yet. There are nine spheres. Earth is known as the Fourth Sphere, the one in the middle. It’s the place where the soul will do it’s greatest work of growth, because that’s our purpose. For each sphere we traverse, our soul becomes more refined until it is pure enough to reach the Ninth Sphere, where you contemplate eternity. This place here is the Sixth Sphere. It is the place where unconflicted souls will spend their time in purification and self-knowledge.”

 

This configuration completely blows me away. “Was Dante onto something, then, with his nine bolgias of hell?”

 

Delly chuckles again, filling the air with the lightness of her sound. “Dante has an active imagination. Hell is nothing as he envisioned it, unless you consider _The Inferno_ as one, elaborate metaphor. No, hell here is really self-created. Souls who have unresolved traumas or those who refuse to accept their deaths go to the Lower Spheres for their own process of purification. They may take centuries but most make it up through the spheres again. It usually involves reincarnation, though. It is necessary to play out those traumas in the Earthly realm before moving up.”

 

“Reincarnation? You mean, you can go back into the world again?” This new reality never ceases to amaze me.

 

“Yes, it is absolutely possible and, in some cases, necessary, to the soul. Each soul has a journey, a path that they must complete to reach purification. For some souls, reincarnation must take place to resolve issues from previous existences. Otherwise, their journey is stunted.”

 

This was a lot to take in at once and I lapse into silence as I ponder her description. Maybe if I reincarnated, I could find Katniss and be with her again. I didn’t even care if it was in a romantic capacity but it would put an end to our separation.

 

“As to your other question,” Delly interjects and I know full well she had read exactly what I was thinking. “For most, this sphere is full of joy. But you are still missing Katniss, so you are not able to really immerse yourself in your environment. However, time works a little differently up here than on Earth. She’ll be here before you know it.”

 

I stop in my walking to study Delly. “You say that with such certainty,” I say suspiciously.

 

“Well, of course, silly! Everybody dies,” she gives me a sidelong glance before giggling. “Oh, alright, you’ve figured me out! While you were sleeping, I asked about your Katniss.”

 

This gives me pause. “You asked about Katniss? What does that mean?”

 

“Well, people here learn different tasks that help keep things organized. There are Guardians, like myself, Comforters, who work in the lower regions with more difficult souls, Trackers, Builders…”

 

“Okay, Delly, I get it!” I exclaim impatiently, immediately regretting my tone. “What did you find out about Katniss?”

 

“Only that she is destined for a long life and will join us in her seventieth year,” she smiles excitedly when she sees my reaction.

 

“A good, long time. Did you get any other details?” I ask, wondering if they are good years, if she moves on and maybe begins a family with someone else. Though I know this is something that would do her well, I am already jealous of whoever will get to share her life.

 

Delly shakes her head. “The future is malleable, and details are vague but the trajectory of her life has been measured out and she will be here in time. And time here is very strange. A lifetime is but a moment in this Sphere.”

 

My heart leaps with joy at the prospect that our horrible separation and pain will be at an end. And yet, there is a vague apprehension that will not leave me alone. Katniss’ song has not changed - there is no evidence that her vigil for the dead has ended. Delly worries about me moving on but what about Katniss? A life of mourning seems unendurable and suddenly, I want nothing more than for Katniss to end her grieving and move on.

 

I’m seized with a thought that lifts my spirits. “Prim! She has to be around here somewhere! Can I see her?”

 

Delly’s appearance quivers, her outline shimmering before settling back into her solid form. “You’ll see her soon, I promise.”

 

I need a few moments to process everything I’ve learned so far. Delly nods with understanding, as if I had asked out loud for a moment alone.

 

“Call and I will arrive,” she says. With a blink, she is gone.

 

I move to the wisteria tree in the distance, eager to get close to the painting that had meant so much to us. I think on the night we modified the painting, and see, at the foot of the tree, those imperfect flowers that we’d added together. I take a deep breath and smell the jasmine of that night so long ago and Katniss’ voice in my mind becomes louder. She’s calling me, looking for me, but I am no better than a shadow on a painting. I can’t reach her and her voice both soothes me and fills me with a desperation for what I can’t have.

 

I sink beneath the deep purple and blue of the hanging boughs and wish fervently for Katniss. I miss her. I long to touch her. It’s ridiculous to think I can be happy without her, even here. The idea of it makes the most perfect heaven unbearable. I need her and I think I say the words out loud. There is so much to see, so much to experience here. I am more than an artist, more than a fallible human being. I’m a living extension of the universe. It should fill me with glory, gratitude and awe. But it is empty without her. It’s horrible to wish the death of someone you love but if that is the only way to have her...

 

A shift in the grass behind me tells me that I am not alone. I look up and almost die on my feet when I see it is Katniss herself. She is dressed as she was that night we painted the tree. Her tiny shorts. Tank top. Long, flowing black hair. I rub my eyes, not believing what they tell me but when I open them, she is still there. Overcome with longing, I launch myself from my place on the grass, striding across the open hill to embrace her.

 

“How?” I ask but the word dies on my lips as my arms pass through thin air. I don’t get to caress her skin, or play with her hair, or grasp her hips and make her mine. What I have conjured is an apparition, a lie. Now I understand the danger of self-deception, loneliness and sadness. I’m going mad even here and the idea of it provokes a rage in me.

 

“What kind of heaven is this anyway?” I scream into the air as the mirage fades. “What’s the point of Paradise if you carry every hurt, every love in your heart as if you were still alive? And why do I have to do this alone?!” I sink back to the ground and it all becomes unbearable. I look up to see Delly staring down at me with pity in her eyes.

 

“You’re not alone,” she whispers quietly and there are real tears in her eyes.

 

“But without her, I might as well be. You don’t know what it means.” I look up at her, pleading for understanding, wondering if anyone could ever understand me. I perceive how singular my and Katniss’ situation was. How thoroughly worthless heaven and hell and everything would be if none of the living could let go of each other. “I feel like someone has ripped something essential from my soul and everything has become...heavier, more unbearable than before. Even the things that should bring me pleasure are a curse to me now. Where is my heaven, Delly?”

 

She shakes her head, true confusion writ across her face. “I don’t know, Peeta. You are such an anomaly, like few I’ve ever seen before. Others take comfort that their loved ones are safe, that they will join them. They are able to release each other. But you and Katniss…” she sinks down on the grass next to me and it is the first time I notice the distress of her aura.

 

“I’m sorry,” I say, sincerely. “I am not much fun to be around.”

 

Delly laughs, her eyes twinkling. “It’s okay. I am learning so much about you. You are defying everything I know about this place and it is a growing experience for me, too. I can see you’re going to cause all kinds of trouble,” she laughs. “Hey, do you want to see some constellations? It will take your mind off of things. I bet you never thought you could get a close-up view of Andromeda.”

 

I shake my head, feeling better but still a long way from being well. “I think I’ll just head back home and try to paint. It’s always revived me in the past.”

 

**XXXXX**

 

_Even when I sleep, I hear her song. The night we painted the wisteria tree together, I could not remember what was playing in the background. I knew it was old, a WW2 ballad. But now, in the gauzy, purple recesses of my half-sleeping mind, I watch her sway to the music and sing along:_

Sometimes I wonder why I spend

The lonely nights dreaming of a song

The melody haunts my reverie

And I am once again with you

 

When our love was new

And each kiss an inspiration

But that was long ago

And now my consolation

Is in the stardust of a song

_Did she really sing it that night? Or is my imagination, desperate for contact with her, embellishing the memory to attain the mood of loss that I’d come to associate with her?_

_Not just her song. Her face. Her long, dark hair. The grey eyes clear as running mountain water, melted from snowdrifts and warmed by the sun. I get up from my place on the stool, and reach for her but my hand passes through her as if she were a mirage. The same mirage I’d seen earlier today, placed into the dream landscape of my new home, by the same imagination that had envisioned her song. An illusion of my lonely heart._

_The memory is real. I’ve done this already. I’ve been here, in this room, on this stool, held her between my arms and legs. But her image won’t solidify. She’s singing but she’s covered in ash now. I reach for her again, thinking “I’ll fix this. I’ll take care of you…” but she dissipates as I claw the air for her and the only thing I have left is her song. I know when I wake, I will hear it everywhere I go. Had I been mortal, I am sure it would have driven me mad._

 

**XXXXX**

****

**_Katniss_ **

Always

****

_Peeta whispers the word and I search for him, pushing through violet mist. I catch the scent of cinnamon and dill. Oil paints. His hand caresses my cheek and when I reach up to hold it in place, it dissolves into the mist. I cry out his name and the sound dies in the clouds before the amorphous purple takes the drooping shape of wisteria blooms._

_I hear Peeta calling for me, but my tongue has grown thick and fuzzy. Dry as sandpaper. Ineffectual._

_When I try to shift the wisteria blooms out of my path, they shatter into thousands of iridescent shards, beautiful and dangerous, as they float in the air around me to the soundtrack of screeching tires and grinding, colliding metal. Then...silence._

I don’t remember opening my eyes. Nor do I remember laying on the couch. But I must have at some point after eating a pitiful lunch. What did I eat?

 

My gaze hones in on the painting in front of me. The centerpiece of our sitting room. The puffy purple blossoms on the tree recall the mist of my dream. Or hallucination.

 

Reliving the last sounds I heard on the phone with Peeta has become a staple of my nightmares. I squeeze my eyes shut and clench my fists against my temples, trying to banish the memories. Real or not real. I listened to the only man I’ve ever loved die.

 

I can’t do this to myself. Thinking about it will make me go mad. So I tear my eyes open and search about the room. My limbs heavy and almost numb, I am unable to move. Unable to seek a change of scenery to distract myself.

 

Looking back up at the painting, I feel a faint flicker of joy. The whisper of a memory. It will have to work. I force my eyes to see only our painting and instead relive in my mind the night that we finished it.

**XXXXX**

It’s a sweltering summer night. I have to call tomorrow to get someone to come look at our air conditioner. For now, every window in the house is thrown wide, admitting a fragrant breeze from our garden. I sashay into Peeta’s studio, my hips swaying lightly to the music, the melancholy lyrics of _Stardust_ slipping through my lips. He glances up from what he’s working on and smiles at me, watches me as I make my way towards him, only turning back to the massive canvas on the easel when I come to stand behind him and wrap my arms around his shoulders. I examine the canvas while he mixes paints, hips still moving, although I stop singing.

 

It’s our lakeside spot at Tahoe. He’s been working on it for a couple of days now and has already finished the trunk and branches of the tree. The sky glows in the vibrant hues of sunset. All that remains to be painted is the abundance of wisteria blooms.

 

“How do you manage to bring these things to life in such detail?”

 

“I guess I just have an eye for beauty,” he replies, turning his head enough to look at me from the corner of his eye, a playful smile flitting over his mouth, his voice soft and low. “I could show you, if you want.”

 

“I don’t know,” I bite my lip and hedge his suggestion, leaning my cheek against his soft t-shirt. He smells of cinnamon and dill, lingering aromas of his day in the bakery.

 

“C’mere,” he stands and gently pulls me in front of the stool, gesturing for me to sit. I only hesitate a second before taking the seat. “You tried to teach me how to shoot. I can try to teach you how to paint.”

 

Peeta grabs a chair and sets it behind the stool for him to sit. His legs spread, bracketing mine, our thighs touching as he reaches around me and draws my gaze up to the canvas. Selecting a brush, Peeta places it in my hand.

 

“We’ve got some flowers to grow,” he whispers against my neck and I shake my head frantically.

 

“No, Peeta. Not this one. I don’t want to mess up this painting.”

 

He slips a finger under my chin and tilts our bodies and heads so we’re face to face. “This painting is for us. There is no way on earth you could ruin it.”

 

Then he takes my hand in his, guiding it to the paint, whispering instructions as we dip the bristles in smooth colors and sweep off the excess.

 

I’m not paying any attention to his words, just the low hum of them deep in my center, and the warmth of his breath against the shell of my ear and my cheek, and the feel of his hand surrounding mine. I suck in a halting breath as we dab paint onto the canvas, and Peeta rests a hand on my shoulder, massaging gently until I relax and smile at the flowers taking shape under our brush.

 

Swishes of purple and he kisses my temple. A dab of a deeper shade and his hand skims down over my arm, twining our fingers together and resting our left hands on his knee. Our wedding rings clink together and my smile widens as I think of the matching inscriptions on them while the tree blooms brighter with every stroke.

 

I am hypnotized. Delirious. My skin itches, ready to combust. I ache for his touch. For the same feather soft touches of the paint brush over every cell of my skin and between my legs, only with his tongue instead of synthetic bristles. My breathing picks up at the thought, and Peeta’s fingers rub between mine, a lazy imitation of what I hope we’ll be doing later. He continues to murmur to me about brush technique and texture, how to create the right gradient of shades to mimic the wisteria.

 

Finally, he pulls our hands back from the canvas.

 

“What do you think, Katniss?” his soft words tickle my ear, and I hum my approval. He quickly cleans the brush, and I shift to look at him.

 

“Are we done?”

 

“No,” he chuckles, setting the brush down and cupping my face between his wide palms. “We have to wait for it to dry a little.”

 

Then his lips are on mine in a slow caress. I grip his thighs, my bare feet curling over the rungs of the stool. As the kiss grows frantic, his hands drop and then sneak under my tank top, up to palm my breasts. He groans into my mouth, dips his tongue in then retreats. I arch into his touch as he rubs his thumbs in circles around my nipples, coaxing them into tight peaks. The craving for him spreads with every pass of his flesh over mine. It thrums through my veins, and I need to know how badly he wants me, too. I push my hips into his and smile at the feel of his hardening length against my backside.

 

“Katniss,” he says in between kisses. “Don’t...be...quiet...this...time.”

 

“What?” I ask, desire clouding my understanding.

 

“You’re always so quiet. I want to hear you shout,” he whispers as his hands lower to my waist and lift my shirt. I help him remove it and then his hands are on me again, steadying me on the stool yet sending the room spinning with a simple caress. He continues to speak between the open mouthed kisses he leaves burning over my shoulders. “I want you to tell me exactly where you want me. How hard. How fast. How deep. Until it feels so good that biting your lip or kissing me isn’t enough to stop you from screaming your release.”

 

“Peeta,” I gasp as his hands hurriedly unbutton and lower the zipper of my shorts. “The windows are open.”

 

“I don’t care. Besides, it’s late.” And then one hand dips beneath the waistband of my panties, seeking out the wet heat waiting for him. The other returns to my breast and grips it almost roughly while he groans into my hair. “Tell me, Katniss. Tell me what you want.”

 

“Not good with words,” I whine in protest and his fingers start to retreat. “No!” I shout and buck my hips into his hand. I can feel him grinning against my ear where he’s nipping and then licking to soothe the sting.

 

“Say it, Katniss,” he demands. I’ve never really directed Peeta in this before. He always seemed to just know what I wanted and how to provide it. We’ve always felt so strangely in tune. But he’s right about the other part. I frequently shush him or stifle any sounds I make, afraid of someone hearing us. Hearing me. Why was I afraid to voice how strongly I felt the bond between us in the vulnerable moments created in the haze of passion?

 

“Say it, Katniss,” he commands more harshly, his fingers rolling and pinching my nipple, causing a spike of faint pain followed by a rush of pleasure that rockets straight to my core.

 

“Your fingers,” I squeak.

 

“Where?” he pushes me.

 

I take a few gasping breaths before I can force the words from my throat. “Inside me.”

 

“That’s it. Just like that,” he praises and parts my folds with his fingers before sliding first one, then another inside me. He uses his other hand, spread over my lower abdomen, to bind me to him, so I can’t move. Any pleasure I receive will be from Peeta’s hands and lips. He’s taken away my ability to alter the sensations and movements, forcing me to verbalize my desires, not so I can take them, but so he can give them to me.

 

Peeta’s fingers curl inside and around me as they pump in and out. I whimper and try to wriggle, but Peeta only tightens his hold on me and _tsks_ in my ear before kissing his way down my throat to suck on the pulse point at the base of my neck.

 

“Tell me _exactly_ what you want.”

 

“Ung, clitoris,” I groan and then his thumb is there, brushing breezy touches over the spot I want him to mash his thumb into and use to wring me dry. He must know this. He’s just teasing me. It feels so good, though; I am lightness anchored to him through touch. But after a few minutes, I’m desperate. “Harder, Peeta!”

 

“Yes,” he moans as he complies with my wishes. “Keep talking, Katniss.”

 

My head falls back on his shoulder and I pant towards the ceiling while his fingers push me higher.

 

“Come on, Katniss. Sing for me, baby.”

 

“Too hot. Too tight,” I gasp and his motions falter for a second.

 

“You want your shorts off?” his question is a breathy whisper and I nod. His fingers pull out from me and he holds me steady on my feet while I shimmy out of the shorts and panties. Completely naked, I expect us to move elsewhere, but Peeta tugs me back onto the stool, tight against his crotch and spreads my legs wide, draping them over his.

 

As soon as I’m settled, his hands resume their torment, the wet noises of his fingers inside me shockingly loud in the quiet night. My small, quiet gasps join them, an erotic song that Peeta conducts with lips and hands.

 

“Oh...god. Let me move, Peeta. Please.”

 

“No. Tell me how to make you come. Do you want me inside of you?”

 

“Not yet,” I say with a shake of my head. “Not yet. But faster. Deeper. Oh!”

 

His ministrations draw a few noisy moans from me before I manage to bite my lip, silencing them. Peeta’s shoulder jounces my head and then his lips part mine, invading with tongue, and when he pulls back, he nips my lower lip to scold me for stopping myself.

 

“More,” I whisper, and his hand gradually takes on a frantic, impossible pace. My legs press down against his as I struggle to lift my hips into his touch. I whine at him. “Almost. I need...”

 

“You need what, Katniss? This?” He draws his fingers out and pinches my clitoris, rolling it between his soaked digits and tugging a little. I keen loudly and jump violently in his arms. My hands fly up behind me and grip his hair, pulling on the flaxen strands as more noises soar from deep inside me. “Fuck, yes,” he moans lowly as he repeats the motions with more urgency and sends me spiraling into the depths of need.

 

I’m still seeing spots when I feel him working the fastenings of his own shorts and stop him with my words.

 

“Not yet,” I say again, unsure where this boldness comes from. It is intoxicating and thrilling. “I want your mouth on me first. Your tongue.”

 

He inhales sharply, but stands and moves me to the chair, kicking the stool aside before he kneels between my legs. Peeta’s hands run from my knees up my thighs to the juncture of my hips. I can see his erection straining against his paint splattered shorts and the lust burning in his eyes. He looks up at me and grins wickedly.

 

Then he lowers his mouth to my lips, tracing the tip of his tongue over the wet folds. My hands clench the edge of the chair, and I try so hard not to grind into his face. His fingers hold me wide open as his tongue dips inside me, drawing out liquid want and savoring it. He smacks his lips before taking another taste. I whimper and watch his head bob between my legs, waiting for the moment when he looks up to gauge my response or demand instruction.

 

When his blue eyes find mine, I lick my lips and speak.

 

“Stop teasing and make me come again.”

 

Peeta groans and devours me, his tongue lapping at me and his lips sucking. I move my hips in time with his mouth as flames lick through me once more. The urgency of his mouth contrasts with the languid circles his thumbs draw on my inner thighs and only serve to heighten my need.

 

“I need you inside me right after I come,” I tell him. He glances up, but doesn’t acknowledge what I said, instead doubling the pressure of his tongue as it swirls over my aching clitoris. I ache for another release and Peeta seems to know that.

 

“Suck on it,” I say, shocking myself. Unable to face him after my wanton demand, my eyes dart up to our painting. He does exactly as I ask, and my vision becomes nothing but the gauzy violet clouds of wisteria blooms. I feel nothing but the fluttering of my flesh against his tongue and the vibrations of Peeta’s moans that prolong my release and draw a strangled cry from me.

 

I float on those clouds while Peeta yanks off his shorts and shirt. I smile and move sinuously as he pulls me to the edge of the chair and hikes my legs up to my chest, pressing them between us as he pushes into me with a slow, elegant thrust.

 

My walls clench him, and I’m not sure I’ve even finished one peak before Peeta drives me towards the next with his hips and his cock. Sweat pools between us as he pants harshly, gasping my name and flinging his head back in bliss.

 

“Tell me,” he moans.

 

“This.” I grip his cheeks, slick with perspiration and taut with effort. Digging my nails in his flesh, I pull him into me and shout with the pleasure. It builds at a frightening pace, flooding my abdomen and chest with something so bright, I dare not look at it. He kisses me, desperate and hungry, and I taste my own desire on his lips and tongue before he releases me with a ragged moan.

 

“Katniss, I can’t last much longer. You feel too good,” he grits out, clenching his jaw as I lose all control of my vocal chords, the desperate, greedy sounds that fly from my throat and bounce off the tile floor unlike any other I’ve made before. I slide my hand up his back, feeling every ridge and chord of straining muscle under my palms and fingertips. Tangling my fingers in his hair, I hold his forehead close to mine, witnessing the fight to hold himself back in his expressions, feeling the effort beneath my hand gripping his ass. He whispers to me, soft, loving words that land in my heart and in the very center of my being as I crest with a long cry of his name, his selflessness my undoing.

 

Peeta grips my backside to keep me from falling out of the chair as I buck beneath him and he grunts in time with his frantic thrusts. My walls flutter erratically around him. I absently note tears leaking from the corners of my eyes as his motions fire aftershocks in me. Wave after wave rolls through me, blocking out all that exists beyond us, this room, the pounding of my heart and the indecent squeals emanating from my mouth.

 

“Oh, Katniss,” he moans out as his hips slow to lazy thrusts, and I feel him pulsing inside me, filling me.

 

The chair slips a little beneath me, and Peeta lifts me from it. He settles us on the floor so I am sprawled on his chest with my legs between his, the tile floor cooling our fevered skin. Peeta links our hands together again, pulling them to his mouth so he can kiss each of my knuckles. We lay there, tucked irretrievably into a close embrace as the clock ticks the night away.

 

I inhale the scent of jasmine and crepe myrtle on the humid breeze, mingling with the fragrance of our sex and the paints. I rest my chin on his pectoral and look down at him. With his eyes closed and lungs still heaving to draw in air, Peeta is beautiful, his cheeks and torso dappled with a pink flush. Then he opens one eye and gives me a slow, satisfied smile.

 

“I think the paint is dry enough to continue, now.”

 

I laugh merrily and pepper kisses over him. “We should have known this would happen, given the subject of our painting.”

 

Peeta’s eyes sparkle in mirth, and I know he’s thinking not just of the time we peeled off wet bathing suits and joined bodies in the shade of the tree, but also our last morning at Tahoe, when we paid the tree one last visit and got caught in a sudden rain shower, choosing to pass the time kissing under that tree, protected by the wide branches and layers of leaves and draping blossoms. I can still feel the cool rain dampening our hair and the scorching heat of his lips on mine. He sighs happily and looks up at the tree being reborn in our home.

 

“I love you, Katniss.”

 

I shift myself to look directly in his eyes, needing him to know what I say next is the truth.

 

“I love you, Peeta. Always.”

 

Peeta grins and pulls me down for another kiss.

 

**XXXXX**

 

The memory finishes playing across my eyes at a rapid pace. Peeta tickling me as I laugh and squirm, the paint brush clutched in my hand and his teasing as we smeared a few of the flowers, added some at the base of the tree because we could. His insistence that the imperfections were what made it perfect to him. Peeta hanging the finished painting in a prominent spot in our sitting room, silencing my protests with kisses and pleading eyes that I couldn’t refuse.

I am suddenly filled with new purpose. I’ve been adding to the wrong paintings. Unwilling to change the ones with real meaning to them, I have been altering ones he hadn’t finished or had scrapped. Ones I could partially view as dispensable.

 

My body is sluggish as I peel myself from the couch and grab a step ladder, wrenching the painting off the wall and taking it to the studio. It takes me a moment to find the larger easel, but when I do, I quickly set it up with our wisteria tree displayed and ready. My muscles have awoken with adrenaline or purpose, I cannot be sure.

 

With little thought, I mix paints. Varying shades of orange and brown. A little white and some spring green. Yellow. A touch of red. Then I set brush to canvas before I can change my mind. It requires great concentration because I still do not want to ruin this painting. As I work, my eyes flicker to the spots I know are there. A few smudges or smears, misshapen blooms that show my hand in the painting of this scene. The spots that caused my brow crease in frustration and Peeta’s warm chuckle to fill my ears and tease my scowl into a smile.

 

By the time I am done, stepping back to admire my work, I have to flex my fingers to ease the ache that has taken up residence in their joints. A soft, orange blanket edged in red spreads out over the grass, two pairs of hiking boots discarded beside it. And dandelions have sprung to life around the tree. A sudden melancholy sweeps through me as I am blindsided with the realization that those two pairs of hiking boots will never again be tossed carelessly aside together for a sunset swim or a romp in the grass.

 

“Why do I think you can see this?” My voice is hoarse and overly loud in the silent house. “Why do I think you can hear me?”

 

Then...I whisper the lyrics as I wait.

 

_Beside the garden wall_

_When stars are bright_

_You are in my arms_

_The nightingale tells his fairy tale_

_Of paradise where roses grew_

_Though I dream in vain_

_In my heart it will remain_

_My stardust melody_

_The memory of love's refrain_

 

I’m not even certain what it is that I’m waiting for.

**XXXXX**

****

**_Peeta_ **

****

I stumble out of the house into the fresh air of the morning. This perpetual daylight had been wearing on me and I asked Delly if this was something I could change. I was still close to my mortal life and needed the rhythm of sunrise and sunset, day and night.

 

“Mind is everything here!” she exclaimed happily.

 

So now, my universe has a sun and a moon that mimic the movement of those bodies on Earth.   They make me feel more human.

 

The forest has grown while I slept, reaching the north end of the house. I stand on the threshold of our home and stare at the new growth, startled at its appearance. Until now, I had full control of the landscape and I willed things to grow in the normal way plants had of doing on earth. I would have seasons. I would have something that approximates the climate I was accustomed to.

 

Now, beneath our wisteria tree lay a blanket and discarded boots. I rub my eyes, though my perception, as Delly taught me, was no longer dependent on them. The act of pressing my eyelids was a throwback to when I had a body. I sprint towards the hill and see the field of dandelions that now covers it. They are strange flowers - nothing like dandelions I’d remember from home.   They are smeared and somewhat undefined, as if they hadn’t been sure if they were flowers or blobs of color.

 

As if they’d been painted…

 

I freeze in my tracks when I see in detail the picnic blanket and two pairs of boots. My heart, or what I perceive as my heart, races in my chest. I remember that blanket, those boots, the scene beneath the wisteria tree so many years ago.

 

“Delly!” I cry out.

 

She materializes next to me. “Peeta?”

 

I point with a shaky finger at the blanket and boots, the dandelions dotting the landscape, and ask her wordlessly, _What is this_?

 

“Did you add these?” she asks with concern.

 

I shake my head, sinking to my knees to grasp at one of those tender petals, Katniss’ song strong in my head. “I woke and found them here.”

 

Delly furrows her brow in real confusion. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say someone has added something to your reality.”

 

I know the answer but I can’t say it. I know now why I hear her music, why I dream of her every single night. Why I reach for her and cannot touch her.

 

“She’s talking to me, Delly! She’s trying to communicate with me!” I choke on the words. It’s what I want more than anything in the world.

 

“I’ve never seen this before. I’ve never even heard of this before. Communication across the spheres - that’s not supposed to be possible. To travel to the lower spheres is the privilege of guardians, comforters - souls trained to function in those regions. But to be influenced so heavily by someone who is still earth-bound. I have no answers for you!”

 

I should be happy. I should welcome these signs - _Katniss is trying to reach out to me!_ But instead, I am filled with a cold dread. I shiver and impulsively look down at my hands, at the aura that surrounds me. I can’t explain it, but I felt the distress. The pattern is erratic and lacks the elegant symmetry of my aura of only several weeks ago.

 

“Delly, this doesn’t feel right. Something’s wrong with Katniss,” I say, and now I’m desperate. The dandelions are heavy and undefined, the stalks of varying thicknesses. The imagination that conceived these flowers lacked my talent for verisimilitude. It was amateur and yet, they were the most beautiful dandelions I’d ever seen.

 

I crawl to where the blanket lay, together with the discarded shoes. It was the same one as from our trip to Lake Tahoe. “We have to help her!” I say, the fear rising up in me. “I have to find a way to communicate with her.” I pick up the blanket and shake it out, waving it like a flag on the hill.

 

“I see you!” I shout into the open hills. “I’m here! I exist!” I repeat myself until I'm hoarse.

 

Delly only stares sadly at me and after a time, I accept that my actions are futile. I lay the blanket carefully on the ground again, fingering the worn boots, the ones she wore on our trip holding my attention. Delly tries to distract me. She suggests a trip to the city, to meet others like us. She thinks I’m ready for the company of others. But I could care less. Katniss was trying to talk to me and I need to stay close by for any more of her messages. The music, the dreams, the tree - I hadn’t understood before but I know now. I have to stay here and try in every way to reach back to her.

 

**XXXXX**

**_Katniss_ **

****

It must be late. Past midnight, I think. My legs are beginning to cramp and Buttercup has long since abandoned me to my solitary vigil. And still, nothing happens. I really must be crazy to think something would happen.

 

As quickly as the certainty that altering this painting was what I needed to do arrived, it abandons me just as swiftly. I leave the painting and go into our bedroom, glare at the neatly made bed. It mocks me with nightmares and memories of things I can no longer touch. Peeta’s lips, his hands, his hair. I can’t sleep here any more than I have been on the couch. Everywhere I go, there’s a piece of Peeta or Prim. They are woven irrevocably into the fabric of my life and no amount of rending or death will remove them.

 

Turning, I face the mirror hanging on the wall and examine the stranger looking back at me. I try to remember who I am or who I was, but it doesn’t seem to matter. The person I see has destroyed everything she once held dear. The longer I stare at her, the emptier I become, until I grab a vase from the dresser and hurl it at the mirror.

 

It shatters under the impact, along with the vase. Shards of both shimmering and reflective glass cascade to the floor and litter the dark wood surface, interspersed with the begonias I cut from our garden just two days ago. I choke on a sob and then stifle it down. Still nothing. No change, no shadow. No words in my head.

 

Returning to the studio, I narrow my eyes at the painting. The one that meant everything to me. I finally found a way to ruin it and it doesn’t even matter. Not really. Peeta’s gone, taking whatever we had between us with him.

 

“You can’t see this, can you? You can’t see any of it.”

 

I search the cabinets on the opposite wall until I find what I’m looking for and then splash the canvas with undiluted turpentine. The pain I feel is immediate and acute and pervading as the paint begins to run in mangled streaks of color until they mix together to grey, hopelessly marring our beautiful creation. I stumble backwards until I hit the table and grip it’s edges to keep from crumbling to the ground.

****

**XXXXX**

****

**_Peeta_ **

****

All I can do is scream. The sky has turned stormy and black against my will. Clouds swirl overhead in anger, the wind howling in agony. I run outside, for the first time feeling real fear. I had not made this happen - I hated thunderstorms and lightning. It’s midnight as I envision midnight - a moon high in the sky that is now obscured by the tempest gathering overhead.

 

The focus of the storm’s rage is on the tree and I watch as lightning burns angrily from the sky. There is more than just wind and rain in the air - there is desperation and suffering, as if they were spirits whipped by the wind that now thrashes me, wind that was more than the wind you feel on earth, wind that wounds the spirit and scars the soul.

 

A powerful blast of lightning strikes the tree. I run towards it, screaming into the storm, my grief bordering on madness as the leaves turn to ash. They fall to the ground, mixing with the rain to run in rivulets of once blue and purple into the churning stream at the foot of the hill.

 

“Katniss!” I bellow, her song rising in my ears, the song choked with agony. It’s wordless, only a low humming that fills me with the vibrations of insect wings; angry insects that will pierce my skin and plunge me into a state of nightmarish hallucinations until I can no longer tell what is real or not in my world.  

 

As all the colors of the tree are drained by lightning and rain, my hope drains away with it. I sink to my knees, searching for the a dandelion, a flower, anything that still remains of the additions she made. But I grasp nothing but naked mud and sob. I don’t know exactly what it is but I know I am a witness to something tragic, and I am helpless to stop it. I watch hope die. It isn’t a quiet or painless death but full of anguish and fear and destruction until the world must acknowledge the gaping wound that now resides in its place.

****

**XXXXX**

****

**_Katniss_ **

****

_Dearest Peeta, I spend my nights waiting for a caress on my cheek that will never come. A kiss ingrained in my very being that I will never feel again. Instead, my search for you yields nothing but serpents’ tongues, mirages, and shattered glass. I’m so sorry I couldn’t save Prim. Or you. I’m sorry I never got to say ‘Goodbye.’ I don’t even know if you heard me say ‘I love you’ before you died. What do we do when we have nothing left to live for? When I stare in the mirror, I see nothing. Just a broken woman with no spark or life to her. A hollow of dead brush where flowers used to grow._

Glancing at the clock, I cap my pen and curl in the bed with the journal clutched to my breast. It’s close to midnight. Time to sleep. I remind myself that Prim’s cat is safe with the neighbors. A loving family. Then I close my eyes and begin to sing, an old song from my childhood. One that haunted me when my father voiced it in his lilting tones. My mother hated this song. But it always spoke to me in some deep way, as though the lyrics belonged in my bones and echoing from my throat as they do now.

 

_Are you, are you_

_Coming to the tree_

_Where they strung up a man they say murdered three…_

**XXXXX**

**_Peeta_ **

I stand in the daylight and stare at the charred remains of the tree. The leaves are gone and the flowers have disappeared. I search for the blanket and the boots, which I’d carefully stored away in the house but they are gone also. Katniss is singing, but it is low and soft. The melody meanders, stuck on the refrain _Are you, are you/Coming to the tree_.

 

I want to tell her _Yes, I’m here but you’ve taken the tree away. It had to have been you, Katniss. Who else would know what that tree represented to me? To us? Who else knew that that tree was the symbol of our survival, that we’d made it past Prim, past our grief and had chosen to create life anew? Who knew that every dandelion in the world was my promise of love, made manifest in tender, yellow petals? The world that you inhabit now is littered with my promises, promises I couldn’t keep. And so, nothing remains but this charred reminder._

 

She continues to sing softly in my mind. _Are you, are you/Coming to the tree_? It is at once a plaintive song and an accusation. _You promised Always_ , it seems to say. _You promised Always_.

 

And then her singing stops.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you to abbythebear and solasvioletta for your excellent beta work!
> 
> Stardust (1929) Lyrics by Mitchell Parish  
> The Hanging Tree (2010) Lyrics by Suzanne Collins


	6. Ashes

**Day 6 of 7: Ashes**

****

**XXXXX**

****

**_Peeta_ **

I’m not sure how long I lay in the dirt before the tree. It could have been a few moments, it could have been an eternity. Here, time is impossible to measure. Maybe keeping time was one of the things I really needed to start learning how to do.

 

This time, I don’t hear Delly’s approach. I simply feel her hand on my head. I’m not startled though. It’s as if I knew that she was coming, could see her without looking up. At least I’m learning to figure that out.

 

I also know, without her having to tell me, that she’s been crying, by the sadness she emanates.

 

“Hard times are coming for us, Peeta,” she says quietly.

 

Even though my body is a figment of my imagination, I’m still too close to my earthly life to completely dispense with the mannerisms of physicality. I sit up slowly, completely empty now that I’ve lost the sound of Katniss’ voice in my head. I have this feeling of numbness, of not wanting to admit any more sensation or information because if I do, I might lose it completely. I am at the cusp of knowing and not knowing and I’m shielding myself with this absence of emotion because what is going to come may finally be too much for me.

 

Delly does not need tears in this form. Her aura is dulled and I can see the anguish in the slowed patterns. Tears do not do justice to what she feels now.

 

“You need to be very strong now. Katniss is dead,” she chokes on those last words.

 

I’ve toyed in these last few days with the prospect of Katniss’ death and what that could mean for us. I fully expected this news to make me happy, even ecstatic. _She’ll be here soon_ \- those were Delly’s words. And yet, when spoken out loud, the words are horrid in their implications. My soul mourns her abruptly shortened life, wonders at the manner of her passing, fears that she has died alone.

 

Confusion sets in. Despite my inability to measure time, I know that seventy years have not passed.

 

“I thought she had more time?” I ask, an apprehension seizing me, unwilling to let go.

 

Delly settles in the grass, her aching aura infecting me with its melancholy. Death, no matter the prospect of an afterlife, is still a monumental passage on heaven and earth. “Katniss has chosen to end her own life.”

 

“What?” I ask, a sheet of ice moving through my body. “When?”

 

“Oh, Peeta,” says Delly in misery. “You must have felt it.”

 

“When she stopped singing,” I respond. It is then that the keening builds up in my soul and moves me to weeping. For several moments, I lose the ability to speak as visions of Katniss in the various stages of our lives together appear before my eyes.   “Katniss…” I repeat like a refrain. After an interminable time of this, I finally gather my flagging energies to ask, “When will I see her then?”

 

Delly closes her eyes, her physical appearance morphing so quickly, I am sure I imagined it. “It’s not like a normal death. Suicides are a special case. Remember when I told you that every soul has a journey they must undertake? When that journey has been interrupted, compensations are made to allow the soul to continue their journey. Suicides break their path of growth by taking it into their hands to end their lives.”

 

“So what does that mean?” I ask, a sense of panic growing in me.

 

“She’s not coming here. Suicides go somewhere else. They have a place in the Lower Spheres, specifically in the Second one. She has to reside there, purging herself until at least the natural expiration of her life arrives and most suicides reside even longer, because it is so hard to break through their self-denial.”

 

“Do you mean to say,” I begin, the threat and anger in my voice causing it to tremble, “That Katniss is in hell because she is a suicide? How is that fair?”

 

“It’s not hell like you think…” begins Delly, but I’ve already jumped up and I pace in unexpressed frustration and horror, running my hands through my hair.

 

“What do you mean, it’s not hell? She’s being punished for having had the worst possible luck, because she lost her sister that she’d sworn to protect and her husband who was too stupid to watch where he was driving. She doesn’t deserve to be punished for that!”

 

Delly stands up to face me, halting my pacing. “Hell is not about punishment. Hell is about people’s lives that have gone so wrong, they carry their agonies with them into the afterlife, creating for themselves the very conditions that caused their suffering in the first place, so that they may continue to punish themselves,” Delly steps in front of me when I make to go around her. “Hell isn’t fire and brimstone. It isn’t Devils and Demons and damnation! Hell is where those who bear the guilt of sin, both real and imagined, go to immerse themselves in it until it is expiated.”

 

I can only imagine what the implications are for Katniss, creating for herself a diabolical place where she can reenact, theoretically for eternity, all the misfortunes that have descended on her in her life, misfortunes beyond her control but for which she believes herself to be responsible. I can’t stand it, not for one minute. I’ve watched her suffer long enough.

 

“I want to find her. You say it is denial that imprisons her. Let me go and try to break through her denial.”

 

Delly shakes her head in horror. “No, Peeta, it’s not possible! Suicides are never recovered in that way. They rarely make it out of their personal hell and when they do, it is a long and painful process. The worst sins are the ones we hold ourselves accountable for.”

 

“What sin? She’s committed no sin! It’s absurd to talk about willful wrongdoing in the context of Katniss’ life! She did nothing more than love too much! I’m not letting her condemn herself to indefinite suffering because of that!” I exclaim in a fury.

 

“Peeta, you won’t find her. The Lower Spheres are virtually infinite!”

 

“I’m her soul mate. I can find her anywhere!” My defiance quells her somewhat and I watch her think.

 

“It’s never been done before,” shes repeats, enunciating each syllable.

 

“You looked pretty shocked at the appearance of the wisteria tree. You didn’t anticipate that one! You just watch - I’ll get Katniss back. I’ll search for her if it takes me the rest of eternity to find her. And you can be a part of it or I’ll go to that city you talk about and find someone who will.”

 

Delly’s appearance flickers again and I have the passing feeling that I am seeing someone else, someone familiar, in the form that appears. But the change is so quick, I’m not able to confirm my impressions. When she is fully solid again, she speaks, by no way convinced.

 

“I’ll be back,” she answers before disappearing.

 

**XXXXX**

 

What I want most is to rest in that way only a soul in this place can rest; in total darkness, where most of the time, you don’t dream. I realize why the sleep here is so restorative - being a soul is already like a dream state. When you sleep in this state, you approach nonexistence and that is the sweetest sleep there is. No wonder Katniss couldn’t help but seek out that ultimate rest.

 

I’m alone and allow myself to fully express my grief. I kneel before the wisteria tree, now the tree of ash, and hug it to me. _I failed you again. I didn’t listen to you in time…_

 

Anger overcomes me at the idea of what her life had become to drive her to this act. I think of the girl who was so blunt with her thoughts, so tough, she intimidated me with her strength, and yet so tender, she could overwhelm me with her compassion. It is deeply painful to think that the girl I knew and loved could get to that point, and I can’t help but be filled with shame that I abandoned her yet again.

 

As I contemplate the charred remains of our most precious memory, Delly is once more beside me.

 

“Come with me,” she says without preamble.

 

I take her hand and we suddenly appear in the study of her home. She indicates a chair that I take as she dashes off to another room in this sprawling home. It is airy and light, full of the sounds of the sea. I glance at the desk and observe a knitting basket with large, knitting needles and several balls of yarn, of varying thickness and colors. I smile to myself. Prim loved to knit. When I taught her how to sketch, it was because she wanted to pursue a career in design. She also liked medicine and could be as methodical and logical as her sister. I wonder to myself how two such disparate gifts could reside in the same mind, but Prim was a study in contrasts - innocence and wisdom, sweetness and steel, art and science. My heart aches for Prim, who was taken so young and who had everything going for her. That was a credit to Katniss, who made every sacrifice to make sure she had the best possible life.

 

The sounds of speech drift into my mind and I realize we are not alone, though I can’t make out the other voice I hear. I have not been curious about others here until now and it occurs to me that I am ready to go to their City and meet the other souls who reside here. Except I am determined that when I do this, it will be with Katniss by my side.

 

I continue to take in the room and observe the statues that are interspersed with books. Something catches my eye and I rise slowly. _It can’t be…_

 

I reach my hand out to pick up the small ballerina figurine as Delly reenters the study. I sense her pause as I turn the ballerina in my hand, studying the long lines and contours of the unblemished porcelain. As I stare in wonder, a voice enters my mind and it is no longer Delly’s.

 

“You meant so much to her. When I saw you together, you always appeared to lean towards each other, like two magnets. I often found you just holding hands, not speaking, yet you were somehow communicating. When you watched tv or spoke, she always rested her head on your shoulder.”

 

“Prim…” I whisper quietly, turning towards her and closing the space between us with long, impatient strides.

 

“There was always something between you, something beautiful and priceless, beyond words. I can’t imagine you without her or her without you, though she is my sister and I love her more than my own mother.” She shimmers again but this time, she does not interrupt the transformation. Delly morphs and suddenly, the aura makes sense, the brightening of the yellow, the girl-like pink. I find myself face-to-face with Prim.

 

“I always hoped to find someone and have what you two have. In those years we lived together, I think it was enough to watch you together to be happy,” she says as I pull her into my arms and hold onto her slender figure, not quite a girl, not resolved into a woman. She’d been so young when she passed. I’m so happy to see her, I’m long past caring if my tears are real or not. My face is bathed in them now.

 

“Thank you for making Katniss so happy!” she says fiercely as I squeeze her, rocking gently. I breathe in her scent, though it is the richness of the sea that greets my nose. I’m speechless with joy and wonder. She’s been with me all this time and though there’d been clues, I had not realized it.

 

“Why did you hide yourself from me?” I choke through my sobs of happiness, of loss and of disbelief.

 

“You needed to be ready. You have your own guilt too and it was keeping you from seeing me. Your desire to see me became stronger than your guilt over my death. That is when I was able to appear.”

 

I caress her soft, golden hair, the eyes that are so much like Katniss’, except that they are blue and not grey. Her fine, classic nose, high cheekbones. My artist eye takes in every lineament, every curve and dimple. I pull her to me again and cry into her shoulder. The force of all the grief and pain of losing her - the day I went to the woods to gather Katniss, the nightmares, the institution - these thing compound to reduce me to a mass of quivering mourning. I have her but I relive losing her all over again, as if my soul were purging all its grief and replacing it with joy. It is a long process, for her loss had been a deep scar in our lives.

 

When I can manage it again, I relax my tight grip on her. I chuckle with embarrassment. “I guess I missed you a lot.”

 

“I guess you did!” she laughs and it is her voice now in my head, provoking my own happy laugh. My thoughts quickly turn somber as I remember why we are here.

 

“This is what’s happening to Katniss, isn’t it?” I say, finally understanding what Delly/Prim was trying to tell me earlier.

 

Prim nods her head. “Just as your guilt was interfering with your ability to truly see me, Katniss’ guilt, which is much greater than yours, will keep her from seeing any of us when we find her.”

 

“So we’re going?”

 

“Yes.” Prim releases me and we both sit in opposing chairs. “I have permission to help you on your journey. However, I can’t go into the Lower Spheres myself. I can take you to the gates of the City of Dis, or the City of the Damned, and then I have to leave you, because my soul is not ready for the journey.”

 

“Will I have to go alone?” I ask. If she’s not prepared, I was really going to be in a situation.

 

“No. We need a tracker. I know someone very well, and spend a lot of time with him, when we aren’t busy with our other duties. He will take you beyond Dis to find Katniss.” Prim leans forward, taking my hands in hers. This was something she always loved to do and should have been my first clue that she was with me. “Listen to me, now that we are alone. There are stories of people entering the Lower Spheres - Orpheus, Aeneas, Balder, Dante - they are in our myths and all are based on variations of real journeys. But they were mortals. In some way, people who are still alive are closer in their souls to the Lower Spheres than we are. Only Comforters and Trackers are trained to go there.”

 

It was always a treacherous journey to visit the underworld - even I understood that from the stories I’d read. But I push the fear aside and draw courage from the fact that I would be freeing Katniss from years, perhaps centuries, of suffering.

 

Prim nods again in approval, understanding my thoughts. “I’ve been told that suicides don’t recover easily and when they do, it has be on their own awareness. What you are setting out to do might not work.”

 

“I understand that,” I say, shoring up all of my strength and determination.

 

“And no one wants you to succeed more than I. Your Tracker, you will see, has a personal interest in seeing you succeed also. You have allies.” Prim’s eyes narrow at this point. “But, you have to use every ounce of strength you possess to keep from succumbing to the dark power of the place you are going. It is characterized by despair, hopelessness and misery and if you’re not careful, all of the personal sins that plague you will be magnified and cause you to lose hope. Just as in life - when hope dies, your soul will be trapped the same way hers is now. Do you understand?”

 

“Yes...I think so.” I whisper and suddenly, I’m damned afraid.

 

“Be afraid. Fear will make you alert, but always hold on to thoughts that give you hope.”

 

“Well, I never thought I’d see you again! That makes me very hopeful,” I smile, though it is bittersweet, given the circumstances of our reunion.

 

“That’s the spirit, Peeta!” she laughs and it’s the old Prim, the one who is playful and irreverent and not the one who is trying to guide another soul in a terrifying journey through the bowels of hell.

 

“Now, it’s time to get going. We don’t want to keep your Tracker waiting. He’s an impatient sort of guy.”

 

“Can he really help us?” I ask and I know I sound like a five-year old, looking for reassurance.

 

Prim’s mouth takes on a grim set. “If he can’t find her, I don’t know who else will.”

 

**XXXXX**

 

We travel under Prim’s direction, given that I have no idea where I’m going. Our journey ends in the middle of a hardwood forest in a mountainous region similar to where Katniss and I lived on earth. In fact the resemblance is so uncanny, I feel like I’ve wandered these woods with Katniss before and the nostalgia for her threatens to overwhelm me again and suffocate me - _my wife is dead._

 

I pause, absorbing the shock of it all over again. Prim places her hand on my back.

 

“Shhhh...it’s okay, Peeta. I know you can find her. You have to find her!” she says vehemently.

 

When I’m calm again, she makes her way up to the threshold of a cabin. She doesn’t knock - I’m coming to realize such formalities are unnecessary. The door opens and a tall man appears. I’m taken aback when Prim leaps into his arms, practically hanging from his sinewy neck and shoulders. The physicality of the affection is surprising, given all of the talk of mind being the most important thing.

 

The man’s aura is strong - deep, forest green and brown, with a hint of music and form that call to mind the warbling of birds and the rustling leaves of the low-hanging branches of ancient trees. Prim speaks to him, then turns to indicate where I’m standing. He steps into a shaft of sunlight and I can see his features clearly - rugged, angular face; dark, olive-toned skin and long, black hair tied back with a leather tie. His eyes are a brilliant grey, so like Katniss’ that I swear I’m looking into hers. In fact, the resemblance is so uncanny, I can’t help but stare at him and I am certain he is appraising me also.

 

Prim steps between us and makes the introductions.

 

“Dad, this is Peeta Mellark, Katniss’ husband. Peeta, this is our father.”

 

Of all the people I’d expected to meet in the afterlife, I had not guessed for a moment that it would be Katniss’ father. I am completely embarrassed that I did not think once to seek out the other dead in mine and Katniss’ life and am filled with shame at my selfishness. I have only thought about Katniss. I hold my hand out to him and he takes it, shaking it warmly.

 

“You still have the smell of Earth around you, boy,” he says with a deep, gruff baritone that seems to come from the deepest regions of the forest.

 

“I...I’m a recent arrival…” I stutter. He is imposing, perhaps without meaning to be.

 

He nods solemnly, and it is clear that he is a man of little words. How like her father Katniss had been! In appearance, dark and exotic. In speech, not wasting a word where it is not necessary. I feel ill again, thinking about Katniss, and I realize my grief is struggling to escape me. But I hold it in check with a constant reminder of my objective - to find her again.

 

Mr. Everdeen continues to scrutinize me, studying my aura, most likely, and I let him. After all, had we been alive, he would have been my father-in-law and we would have been family.

 

“We are family, son,” the man says quietly. “My girl chose you and that is enough for me, because Katniss was always a level-headed young woman,” his face softens. “Prim has nothing but good things to say about you.” Mr. Everdeen glances over to where she stands and I am positive she is blushing.

 

“Where we’re going,” he continues and I note the change in his demeanor as he gets to the business at hand, “Is like no other place you’ve ever been. Take every idea of hell that you have out of your mind. There’s no fire or devils or demons or any of the sort of things they teach you about in church. The only fire is the one placed there by the souls themselves and the only devils are the ones who continue to punish themselves and do not reach self-awareness.”

 

I nod, trying my best to steel myself for something I can’t even begin to imagine.

 

“You have to school your thoughts, otherwise, they will betray you and you run a serious risk of getting lost in the Lower Spheres. I will help you when you are sinking into that state but you have to do your part. Keep Katniss in mind.” Here his voice changes and I remember that this is her father. If this is difficult for me, it must be unbearable for him.

 

“Son, your thoughts are like a beacon right now. You have not learned discipline in masking them and everything you think bursts from your mind like a spotlight. You have to stop that right now,” he says sternly. “I need you to think of Katniss but focus on your memories so that those thoughts will shield you from the hopelessness you are soon to encounter.” He leans in closer to me. “That sphere is a universe we are entering that contains every variation of human despair that has ever been. You do as I tell you in every moment and I will get you through it. I want my daughter out of there as much as you want your wife back.” He pulls away and directs his attention to Prim. “You will accompany us to the river Styx and then turn back around, agreed?”

 

“Agreed. My last experience in Dis is one I don’t want to repeat.” She glances at me apologetically. “I was impatient with my training at the beginning and went there alone. Dad had to come get me.”

 

I chuckle. “Sounds like something you’d do.”

 

Prim shrugs. “I’m a little better now about being patient.”

 

“One last thing,” Mr. Everdeen interjects. “We can travel the usual way up to the border of the Third Sphere. From there, we will become heavier and more material and have to move as if we were on Earth.”

 

“Souls become more weighed down the deeper you travel into those spheres,” Prim clarifies. I shiver with the expectation of something terrible.

 

“Fear is good, Peeta,” Mr. Everdeen says gently. “But you must act despite it. That is courage. It does not appear to me that you are lacking this quality. Now, the longer Katniss remains where she is, the harder it will be to extricate her. Let’s get underway.”

 

Never a praying man during my mortal days, I nonetheless send a supplication up to whoever is responsible for the world we live in and pray for a successful endeavor and Katniss’ safe return. I think I see Mr. Everdeen give a small nod of approval but the moment is lost as the three of us hurtle toward our destination.

 

**XXXXX**

 

My gift as an artist is to create an exact rendition of the things I see around me. I can duplicate any person, any shape, any landscape that I see. The copies are so perfect that, depending on the medium, the images appear to be photographed. However, I have another gift that many artists who can duplicate their physical world still do not have - the ability to re-envision what they see into something new and different. When I imagined the City of Dis, I would have never imagined the vision that rose up out of the flaming river to greet me now.

 

The stones of the fortress are the color of coagulated blood. There is no other way to describe the deep ochre-black color that appears embedded in every crevice. On the guard towers stand a motley collection of horrible creatures - gargoyles and harpies - who peer at us with such hunger, that I'm sure, if given the slightest provocation, they would take a bite out of us.

 

The sounds that emerge from the city, even from here, are inhuman sounds that I never dreamed could be uttered by a person. The frigid wind that blows in over the river is not natural and chills the mind and the soul.

 

Prim, Mr. Everdeen and I stand at the banks of the foul waters, alight with a fire fueled from deep trenches of matter that appear both inanimate and animate - from flesh to rocks to detritus and human waste. I am almost overcome by the noxious nature of the waters and move to shield my nose, but Katniss’ father stays my hand. “Mind still matters here. Think of something sweet smelling and that foul odor will go away.”

 

I close my eyes and imagine the jasmine that filled the air the night Katniss and I painted the wisteria tree. The sensuous aroma fills my nostrils and drowns the festering odors in their nocturnal sweetness. Mindful of my proximity to Katniss’ father, I quickly suppress the other memories associated with that night and focus instead on the flower’s fragrance. When I open my eyes, Mr. Everdeen smiles down from his height, nodding in approval.

 

“You got the hang of it - the smell and the thoughts. I appreciate that.” He turns, leaving me to blush furiously behind him. Prim pats my shoulder in sympathy before stopping at the water’s edge.

 

“This is where we part,” she says. “Peeta,” she continues with uncharacteristic intensity, “You have a chance to help Katniss. I believe that now, otherwise, I would not have been allowed to help you. Don’t listen to anyone talk you out of what you are doing. And don’t change your mind. Be strong. Do you understand?”

 

I reach out and pull her into a powerful hug. “I’ll bring her back. I promise. There are no other options for me.” I withdraw while she turns to hug her father, wishing him good luck. I follow Mr. Everdeen to a decrepit pier that seems like it would give way under the slightest pressure. However, curiosity gets the best of me and I turn, calling out to Prim, “By the way, who gave you permission to help me?”

 

She laughs now, her aura glowing with life and humor. “Silly! Who else would you ask permission for things around here!? I told you - you have some serious allies cheering you on!”

 

I smile at Prim and my mind floods with the memory of her when she was still alive - her cleverness, irreverence, her uncanny ability to see things clearly. An image of her comes to mind, in which she is learning how to frost cookies with the utmost seriousness, her lip pinched between her teeth, her brow furrowed in concentration. I think of Katniss and resolve that, if nothing else, she must be brought out of her current state and be reunited with her family, who are here now and have always been, waiting for her. And if what Prim says is true, then shouldn’t I succeed?

 

I glance at Mr. Everdeen, who waits patiently, most likely privy to that parade of thoughts. I don’t care though. We set off together down the pier, ready to cross into the City of Dis.

 

**XXXXX**

**_Katniss_ **

****

I am lost in an ash gray cloud. As it weaves around my body, I choke on the dust and finally peel my eyes open to examine my surroundings. Another nightmare.

_I should be dead,_ I think. _Why am I not dead?_

My thoughts swirl as I try to remember what happened. I wrote in my journal and went to sleep. After that...nothing but endless gray.

 

Typical. I managed to kill the people I love most but I can’t even kill myself.

I should go to the hospital…if I cared about my body. Who knows what damage the drugs I took have done? But I’m almost certain that a trip there right now will land me back in a psych ward with more doctors than I can count and no hope of Peeta to help me through the ordeal. And that is not something that I can allow.

My entire body aches as I stand and make my way to the kitchen. I dump food in Buttercup’s bowl and call for him. No response. He’s probably napping or out chasing mice...no. Rubbing my temples, I try to remember. I left him with the neighbors with the excuse that I’d be out of town for a few days. I suppose I’ll have to go get the damn cat eventually. But I am exhausted and make my way back to bed instead, limbs dragging and heavy. I close my eyes and wait for slumber, but it never comes. My ears ring with the sounds of a violent car accident.

I cup my hands over my ears and try to make the noises stop. They won’t stop. Eventually, I am able to make them recede enough to think.

What was I doing before I went to sleep? Painting, I think. My feet shuffle towards the studio where I find the mangled wisteria painting and break down crying.

I destroyed it. Oh my God, I made a painting bleed and die. _Our_ painting. I fall to my knees before it and sway, holding my arms tight around my abdomen. I chant his name in a mournful incantation.

_Peeta. Peeta. Peeta._

Curling up before the carcass of the portrait of our tree, I reach out to touch it but pull my hand back before I get close. The frame of the canvas itself is charred and blackened. As if someone tried to burn it. I didn’t do that…did I? I don’t remember and that scares me almost as much as the destruction of our tree.

 

I must fall asleep on the studio floor. When I wake up, the air tastes stale. I should go outside. Get some fresh air. It takes an inordinate amount of time to pick myself up off the floor and walk to the door leading out to our garden. Dust motes hang in front of my face and I wave them away. I should probably clean the house. Not that there’s anyone who cares about how clean it is. When was the last time I had a visitor? I think Johanna stopped by sometime after the funeral, but when was that?

 

I don’t get the chance to try and remember. Our garden is dying.

 

“No!” I shout out as I cradle a wilting gladiolus bloom, finger the primrose bushes that are parched and turning brown. Then I dig a finger into the ground and find the soil is dry. Drier than ash. It flakes under my touch and I whimper with the pain I share with our once beautiful plants. “How did this happen?”

 

It makes no sense. I haven’t neglected the garden.

 

There’s a buzzing in the back of my brain, something I can’t quite grasp. Like an insect flying against a window, desperate and unable to escape. But I am more concerned with the dying flowers and rush to the hose, determined to save them. I crank the faucet.

 

Nothing happens. There’s no water.

 

Frantic, I rush back inside to call the utilities and that’s when I hear it. Prim is singing. Somewhere in the house, Prim is singing.

 

Dropping the phone, I move through the house as I would through the woods, with a silent tread. Something is horribly wrong. All I find are empty rooms. Of course. Prim is dead because I couldn’t save her. I’m just imagining things and punishing myself for not being able to save her.

 

As I’m turning to return to the kitchen, the house groans under my footsteps. The creaking echoes loudly. Strange.

 

When it stops, I continue into the kitchen and slump down in one of the high chairs next to the island. I rest my head on my folded arms and block out the world.

 

_A barren road stretches before me, the flickering lights of a gas station or diner far in the distance. As I walk, it appears to get no closer, but my shoes shred on the pavement and my mouth goes dry with thirst. And still, I keep walking._

I must have slipped into sleep, for how long, I don’t know. But when I jolt upright in the kitchen, the nightmare lingers. The soles of my feet are raw and my calves throb. The light in the house hasn’t changed at all, and although my mouth is parched, I am not nearly sore enough to have fallen asleep propped in a chair for any length of time. Convinced I must have been seeing things earlier, I return to Peeta’s studio first. The wisteria tree is gone.

 

I search the studio, tearing open cabinets and drawers that are far too small to hold it. The painting of our trip to the Sierra Nevada is gone too. All of his paintings that I adored are gone. Why would someone steal Peeta’s paintings?

 

The garden. The water. I have phone calls to make.

 

The phones are dead. Why are the phones dead? I can’t even call the police to report a robbery, or the utility company to report the water issue.

 

Gathering my purse, I march to the garage, heedless of my appearance. The knob falls off the door and I stare at it as it turns to ash in my hands.

 

_I should be dead. Then why am I in my house? You are supposed to be dead, Katniss. And this…_

I shake my head and smash my fist on the door, sending the ashes of the knob flying around me. Pushing on the door, I am dismayed to find that it won’t budge. _What the hell?_

I am a prisoner in my own home. A place of nightmares filled with memories of the people I have destroyed. At that moment, I break.

 

A mirror shatters in another room, making me jump. I think of the empty reflection of myself the night I destroyed our tree. The reflection I smashed with a vase of flowers. I still feel as empty and dead as I did that night. This is why I should be dead. To get away from this constant pain that masquerades as numbness.

 

In front of the pictures lining the wall of our bedroom, I silently apologize to Peeta and Prim.

_I killed you. And you._

Because I did. Maybe not directly, but they are dead and I am not. All because I failed them both. My fault...all my fault.

 

I don’t deserve Peeta’s paintings to remember him by. And I killed them, so it makes sense that I would kill the garden that served as a tie between the three of us after death came to our home.

 

As I watch, the pictures blacken and curl into ash in their tarnished frames. I close my eyes against the destruction, knowing I must be dreaming. This must be yet another nightmare. When will they end?

 

Smoke fills my nostrils as I sway on my feet, fall back on the bed and wait for tears that make no appearance. When I wake, I pinch myself just to feel the pain. Just to make sure I can still feel. I’m beginning to doubt that I can.

 

Once more, the house groans around me and I scream as something lands on my head. I brush it from my hair, heart pounding and find…dirt. Deep brown earth.

 

Prim sings. Again I search and find nothing.

 

Exhausted from my search and the ordeal with the doors and garden and everything else, I collapse in my study, slumped in the desk chair. Everything in here is perfect. Pristine and clean.

 

I try to turn on the radio or the MP3 player Peeta got for my birthday one year, to cover the sounds I can’t seem to banish from my head, but they aren’t working either.

 

Floating from room to room, I lose all track of time. I thirst but do not hunger. My sleep is plagued with flashes of headlights and blurs of color. Squeals of tires and crashing metal. Gurgling pain deep in my chest, as though I were living the last moments of Peeta’s life.

 

I never hear myself tell him that I love him.

 

Stale air turns noxious. Unbearable. The windows are stuck.

 

I flee once more to the garden. The tree is here, resurrected in a nightmarish hallucination. Charred and lifeless. A hollow piece of memory, once so sweet in my mind, and now gone forever. Everything else is dead too.

 

I lay on the ash coated earth and stare up at its twisted branches. One looks almost like a noose and I contemplate the manner of my death…until a rat scurries across my foot and I run sobbing back into the groaning house.

 

The monster is not outside, but within.

 

Smashed mirrors. Smashed cars. What’s the difference?

_Sometimes I wonder why I spend_

_The lonely nights dreaming of a song_

_The melody haunts my reverie..._

 

I sing but lose focus after a few bars and can’t remember the lyrics. The melody flutters away on the ash that is constantly suspended in the air around me, covering every surface in dull gray shades of misery. I attempt different songs. They tickle at my memory. Something important. Something just out of reach.

 

_Strange things did happen here_

_No stranger would it be…_

 

The music abandons me.

 

Does it really matter? There’s no one left for me to sing to.

 

_I try to remember what you looked like when we were happy. But the memory slips through my fingers. Blue eyes. Blond hair. The details blur as I try to picture the slope of your nose or the line of your jaw or the curl of your lashes._

 

I want the earth to swallow me. To take me along with Prim. Instead it falls from the ceiling and I know I’ve lost it completely but can’t call the doctors or anyone for help. I can’t even leave.

 

Instead, I lay on my side in the studio and wait for death, spinning my wedding ring on the floor, reading what I can see of the inscription when it topples.

 

_K & P – Al_

Death should come and take me. It should have taken me long ago. Hours? Weeks? Months? Probably years.

 

_& P – Alwa_

There’s the scurrying of rats and I shudder. The sounds of Prim laughing. Then Peeta, too. I want to chase after them. To have the chance to tell them how much I love them before they vanish. But I know they’re not real. I’ll never get that chance. So I stay put.

 

My wedding ring spins in a flash of gold and then falls to the tile.

 

_K & P – A_

I want to get in my car and smash it into a tree or drive it off a bridge. It would be better if I were dead. The noose outside begins to sound inviting.

 

_Smooth metal, no inscribed letters._

Instead, I relive the moments I saw or heard them die and know, with every fiber of my being, that I am deadly. Poison.

 

_P - Always_

 

A snake hisses and tears leak from my eyes. _Don’t take my children, too._

But I have no children. And that’s my fault, as well. Peeta never got to be a father. Prim never got to be the cool aunt. The thoughts of what we missed lodge in my chest, a visceral ache that threatens to splinter my heart in two.

 

My eyes try to blink away the tears and the dust. When I open them again, I can still hear the faint sounds of the golden ring on tile, but my wedding ring has vanished.

 

The snake hisses again, closer now. More snakes join the eerie chorus while Peeta and Prim’s agonized screams reverberate in my ears.

 

And I let them scream.

****

**XXXXX**

**_Peeta_ **

 

A boat appears at the end of the dock, a rather small one, with only one person manning the prow. He wears a cloak with a hood that is in tatters and had certainly seen better, cleaner days. His hands are covered in black gloves with which he grasps the handle of the large steering oar. I catch nothing, not even a glimpse of extremely pale, grey skin when his hood shifts. Just emptiness, after which, he turns his attention to the city, avoiding all interaction, ignoring us entirely. We step inside of the boat and I feel the thing creaking beneath my feet, instinctively fearing that I will go through. But I remember the admonishments of mind over matter and instantly feel myself stabilize. Mr. Everdeen nods his head approvingly. “It’s about mental strength."

 

“I think I'm starting to understand. I have to try not to give in to fears for my body, when I no longer have one,” I respond.

 

“Yes, here, your thoughts will have consequences which will feel physical. It is possible, in these lower Spheres to feel pain that is like physical pain but it is all in the mind and that is where you must fight it. Always remember that.”

 

“Yes, sir,” I say, feeling like a child. I am in awe of this man and I wonder what kind of relationship we could have had while alive when I feel so intimidated by his presence. Katniss had that same air about her - competence that bordered on frightening, a powerful personal independence and a very low tolerance for trifles. But she was also warm and loving, and so compassionate, she’d give half of herself away if someone needed it. It is impossible that someone like her could be trapped in a city where souls seem to dangle from the ramparts, where the cold air of desolation thickens the closer we approach. It was impossible to think that someone as good as her could end up here and I was filled with the injustice of it.

 

“I feel the same way you do,” Mr. Everdeen interjects. “No one who is good should end up here.” He lapses into silence. I was sure he would not speak again but he after a long pause, he does. “I like watching Katniss though your eyes. Your memories of her, that is. We don’t get much contact with those on Earth when we are here, unless we are on missions, as Prim was when she was your guide. I have not had the privilege of watching my daughters grow up. Tell me a little more about her.”

 

I smile and think of the things that are most striking about her. “Katniss was...is...the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. She’s strong, physically and emotionally. She doesn’t suffer fools easily. She’s most at home when she is in the woods, hunting or studying the wildlife. She has such a big heart and always put Prim above everything else, and she never failed to help a person who needed it.” My heart sinks and I’ve never wanted to touch her more than at that moment. “I never doubted that she loved me, not for one minute, because she showed me all the time. She’s sensuous, warm and so generous with herself…” I blush and look down, “I’m sorry…”  


“It’s okay. You’re a man. I love a woman also and I think about her all the time,” he is interrupted by the boat striking the shoreline. “We’re here. Your positive thoughts of Katniss must stay in the forefront of your mind. When you have thoughts of despair, you must fight them, for they are not in your nature. They are a product of this place.”

 

We arrive at a drawbridge and I look up at the ramparts of the city walls from below. They are medieval in appearance, down to the mechanism of the drawbridge, though why they would need such a device, I have no clue. The sky here is perpetually dark, lightning flashing at erratic intervals across the sky, so I must depend on those flashes of light to see the details of the path we walk, until we clear the walls and the visibility improves. The street is lit with a combination of torches and lamps that appear electrical.

 

People move about, running through the streets or floating by. They are haggard and angry, absorbed in their own preoccupations and do not even acknowledge us as they hurtle past. There are several fights to my left, near something that appears like a tavern, while another pair of urchins argue viciously down the road. In fact, everywhere I look, there is strife of one kind or another and I feel somewhat aggressive myself, especially when one soul passes close by to me, almost knocking me out of the way. I almost say something, but Mr. Everdeen pulls me back.

 

“Your anger is not your own,” he says gently. “We are in a neighborhood where the wrathful reside. Monitor your feelings - or you will become too susceptible to the emotional chaos around you and you will get lost."

 

I nod, reigning in my feelings. “Is Katniss here somewhere?”

 

Mr. Everdeen shrugs. “Her trail indicates that we must go through the city but it is not necessarily the case that she is here. Let’s continue.”

 

We wind our way through dank, wet streets, houses from various time periods in states of squalor so horrid, I'm afraid I will be contaminated if I even touch them. Then the streets change, and I am exposed to the most vulgar sights - people performing intimate acts in the streets without heed to the public spectacle they are creating. I pick up speed, the unease spreading through me as I briefly consider how very different these acts are from the ones I shared with Katniss, so filled with desire and tenderness.

 

I continue to think of Katniss, the dark feeling dissipating and I begin to feel a sense of hope. A movement in an alley to my left catches my eye. There, against a wall is a woman who resembles Katniss so much, I am sure it's her. Before Mr. Everdeen can stop me, I break into a run.

 

"Katniss!" I shout. I just barely hear her father's voice in my head, telling me to stop when I am suddenly surrounded by a crowd. They laugh hysterically and I turn towards Katniss to warn her to stay back. But the woman I had mistaken for Katniss is actually an old hag, who looks nothing like her at all but who cackles cruelly along with the others. Soon, hands are all over me and though I scream, it feels as if I am being clawed alive.

 

Without warning, strong hands grasp my shoulder, pulling me away from the crowd. With a loud bellow and a flash of light, the crowd disperses like cockroaches until I stand near Mr. Everdeen, trembling from the violation of those hands on me.

 

"I'm so sorry, I thought it was her!" I gasp, feeling like the last fool in the universe.

 

"They read your thoughts and decided to have fun at your expense. Now you know not to believe your eyes and ears. Trust no one."

 

I nod my head quickly, shaken by the cruelty of these souls and hoping we will find Katniss soon before I get into any more trouble.

 

We finally reach the outskirts of the city, the filthy walls towering over us. At the top of each tower sit horrible creatures similar to the ones at the entrance. Mr. Everdeen picks up the pace and soon we are free of Dis.

 

"We're close," he mutters. We race across an arid plain covered in dust and ash, odd homes dispersed in the distance. It reminds me of a lunar landscape, the sounds of collective suffering from Dis receding behind us, giving way to the utter emptiness before us.

 

Vegetation begins to spring up. Not healthy or vibrant, but dry and arid. The ground is sand and it is clearly not designed to sustain anything whatsoever. Everywhere I look, life struggles vainly to hold on but fails in every instance, whether it is in a wilted flower, a dried brush or burnt grass.

 

The terrain changes and becomes rocky. Mr. Everdeen indicates towards a hill and we begin our ascent. There are dust storms in the distance and the sky overhead is a dreary, overcast grey, with a blanket of low clouds that is suffocatingly close to the surface. My heart is breaking and I wonder if there is really any point in doing this, in struggling so long. This place is empty of hope, as we are. Hopeless, like our journey…

 

“Stop!” Mr. Everdeen shouts, the sound of that one word disappearing in the vacuum of emptiness that surrounds us. Not even screams can be heard here.

 

“Peeta…” he pauses, grasping me by my shoulders. “Are you listening to your thoughts? That hopelessness does not belong to you. Stop giving in to it or you will be no good to Katniss.”

 

“I’m sorry! I didn’t realize…” I say, feeling truly pathetic that I’d mentally slid down that hill of negativity so easily.

 

“Listen to me. Katniss’ mother was devastated when I died and like you, I lingered. However, unlike you, I did not have the strength to leave her until my presence did irreparable damage. I thought I was comforting her but in actuality, I drove her straight out of her mind.” He rubs his face with his hand and I have the feeling it is a gesture from his days of being alive. “What you did - leave her for her own good, took more strength than I ever had. You are strong, Peeta. And good. I could have never chosen a better husband for my daughter. Don’t fail now. Keep your wits about you and try to get to her without losing yourself also, do you understand?”

 

I’m deeply humbled by his words. I have to do better. I have to try, for my sake and Katniss’ but also for him, for Prim, for anyone who ever expended any of their life’s energy in loving us.

 

“I’ll stay focused. I promise,” I say, looking directly in those endless grey eyes.

 

“Good. Because we’re here.” He turns around and crests the hill. There, in the dust and ash and dying vegetation, is a broken version of my house in heaven. The roof is missing tiles, gutters hang limply from the awnings. The plants are in terrible shape, snakes and lizards cover the front lawn. Katniss’ car is parked in the front drive but the tires are missing and the hood is bent, as if it had been in a crash. It is the house of abandonment, neglect and misery.

 

My companion and I share a look intended to fortify one another. The time for talk is over. We descend the hill, hoping we are strong enough to face what we will find.

 

%MCEPASTEBIN%

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A million thanks to solasvioletta and abbythebear for being the best betas in the west! You are champions!


	7. Thorns

**Day 7 of 7: Thorns**

**XXXXX**

**_Peeta_ **

I step carefully across the walk, avoiding snakes and lizards who sprawl lazily across the stones, as if in contempt of the visitors. They don’t bother to scurry away, but stare at us in disinterest.

“Why don’t they move away?” I ask Mr. Everdeen.

“These are not ordinary creatures. They are constructed by Katniss’ imagination. They won’t behave the way you expect them to.”

I find their behavior more chilling than if they’d scurried away or reared up at me to attack. I step over them and make my way to the front door. The wood is worn and splintered, as if it had been left out in the elements for years. I press for the bell but it doesn’t work so I rap on the door politely.

No one answers. I glance at her father, who indicates with his head that we should try again. I knock harder but still nothing.

“She loves to spend time in the garden. Let’s walk around back,” I say, stepping back over the bloated reptiles.

The dried grass crunches under my feet, the smell of decay hanging oppressively in the air. I almost trip over a garden hose which is cracked from over-exposure, the metal spout rusted and crumbling. Katniss was always meticulous about our house. She’d known poverty and squalor and in consequence, was very respectful and took care of her possessions. It is jarring to see how badly everything is reduced.

“This isn’t your real home,” Mr. Everdeen reminds me.

“I know, but it is shocking nonetheless,” I answer as I round the back corner of the house.

I finally see her and it’s all I can do to keep from racing across the flagstones and scooping her up in my arms. She looks haggard, even more so than those days she was in the institution. Her hair lies loose and limp over her shoulders, as if it hadn’t been cut or washed in months. Her t-shirt is torn and dirty and her khakis are wrinkled. I blur my eyes and her aura pulses sadly from her body - the green muddied with brown, like a wilted leaf, while the remaining colors are dulled to a pale grey. A soft orange pattern gets lost beneath the gloomy patterns of greys, browns and blacks, making a visible kaleidoscope of her misery and grief. She leans against a tree, holding something small in her dirty hands. She is here, all alone, with no one to make sure she stays clean.

My relief at seeing her and the sadness of her condition give way to fury. Katniss, my Katniss, does not deserve to live like this. In her life she had been a loving person, full of personal responsibility and self-sacrifice. I want to shake my fist and curse at whatever or whoever put her there, commit an act of blasphemy so vile, it will be heard across the spheres or universe or whatever holds this place together, because this isn’t justice or Katniss' soul "working through issues." This is cruelty.

I feel the gentle pressure of Mr. Everdeen’s hand on my arm. It’s all I need to remember that I am allowing this place to get to me. The angrier I become, the more I give in to hopelessness, the further I am from Katniss. She’s done this to herself and my resentment will bring me no closer to my goal of bringing her out. When I turn towards him, his eyes are softened with tears and I am immediately ashamed yet again of my weakness. He can’t protect her and it must kill him inside to see this.

“Peeta, as much as I want to go in with you, it’s best if I wait outside. If we overwhelm her, she will not listen to either of us. I will monitor you and help you if you need it.” He takes a shaky breath to steady himself. “Godspeed, son.”

“Thank you,” I respond, wanting to say more but Katniss’ trembling voice interrupts us.

“Who’s there?” she calls out. Her father raises a finger to his lips and slips away on silent feet. I’m not sure how to act, perhaps not truly believing I’d find her so quickly. I take in her terror-stricken face, imagining what fears she might have in the presence of a strange man in her home. Prim and her father had warned me that she wouldn’t recognize me. I say the first thing that comes to mind.

“I’m a neighbor from just over the hill,” I lie.

She scowls with mistrust. “Which house did you move into?”

“Ahem, I bought the Hawthorne's house, ” I say nervously, rooted to the spot for fear I would spook her and send her running.

“Their house isn’t for sale,” she says, her eyes narrow with suspicion.

“I...uh...they put it on the market some time ago and I bought it and am just moving in. You could ask them.” I suggest.

Katniss stares vacantly at me. She doesn’t recognize me and all I want to do is burst into tears. But I remember Mr. Everdeen’s admonishments and hold my ground.

“I don’t...can’t...leave the house.” Katniss says, all confusion draining from her face. She looks around at the garden as if seeing it for the first time. "The locks are broken, the windows don’t open. I’m a prisoner in my own home.”

“Well, I just walked around the house and came into the garden. I bet you could leave that way,” I suggest.

Katniss shakes her head. “I can’t leave,” she repeats, in a monotone. “I’m a prisoner.”

“A prisoner of what, Katniss?” I ask, hopelessness creeping over me like a cold fog, a helplessness that I have to actively fight against.

“How do you know my name?” she pounces and I mentally curse myself for the lapse.

“Mr. Hawthorne - Gale - he told me your name. We spoke about the neighbors at length and he mentioned you lived up here,” I decide to take a calculated risk. “He said you were a widow and lived here alone.”

Katniss’ face goes blank as she turns her attention to her hands. I now see she is holding a dead flower. “Everything is dying. I have no water, no electricity. I can’t go grocery shopping because the car is broken.”

She has handily skirted my question, which gives me an idea of what angle I can take. “I’m a widower too. My wife...she just passed away a few months ago.”

Katniss turns her face to me and I see something flicker in her eyes, something like recognition but it is swallowed up in the emptiness again. “How did she die?”

“She...committed suicide. Her name was Katniss too. Isn’t that a coincidence?” I ask, my voice stumbling over the words. I feel impatient and try to reign it in because I want her back so badly, it hurts.

I watch with satisfaction as she becomes visibly agitated. She grabs a handful of the soil and studies it carefully. “There aren’t any earthworms in the dirt. That’s a bad sign. It means the soil is dying.”

I don't acknowledge her digression. “Katniss committed suicide because her husband died. Her husband...left her alone…” I feel myself crumbling under the crushing realization that she might not recognize me ever again, and all that implies. “She had already gone through so much and her husband went and got himself killed.”

She eyes me suspiciously as she compulsively digs into the dirt. “I thought you said your wife died. How could her husband be dead too if you are her husband?”

“Katniss…” I say, my heart breaking.

She jerks back, as if struck and scrambles to her feet. “No! Go away!” she screams and runs inside the house. I follow her before she can shut the door on me. “I know how to defend myself!” she cries out as she races towards the kitchen.

I put my hands up to show that I am harmless. “I don’t want to hurt you! I just wanted to get to know my neighbors,” I say desperately, trying to pacify her. “I...look...I can call the utility company, if you like, to get your water and electricity to turn on. Would you like that?” I ask gently, trying to keep the lines of communication open.

Katniss, who has skirted behind the kitchen island, freezes, her eyes becoming dull again. Slowly, as she turns to switch on the tap. “You see? No water.”

“I know,” I’m desperate now, as I see my hope slipping away from me and search for another tactic. “What...what was your husband’s name?”

“My husband? He’s dead,” she says bluntly as she kneels, opening the cupboard to check the plumbing. “Dammit! The hot and cold water valves are on and I still have no water pressure.”

“Katniss!” I say, somewhat impatiently, which causes her to jump. “I’m sorry...I...what was your husband’s name?”

“My husband?” she repeats, this time sitting on the floor, bringing her knees up to hug them to her chest. “My sweet husband. Peeta. I killed him.”

I suppress a sob at this. How did she get this into her head? I want to grab her and shake her and kiss her and love her all at the same time. Instead, I take a deep breath and try again. “That’s funny, you see, because my name is Peeta too.” _Please, recognize me!_

A tremor passes through her, causing her to shake horribly. I kneel down before her and just catch her watching me before she puts her head down on her knees, a long moan escaping into the dusty decrepitude of the crumbling house. Near the entrance of the doorway, a thornbush suddenly blooms, growing weakly through the floorboards. I can’t fathom its existence but I turn my attention to Katniss.

“How...how did Peeta die?” I whisper, trying to keep the momentum and stave off the vacuous look in her eyes when she is actively in denial.

She stares at a point on the floor for several moments before answering, “He had a car accident.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. She lapses into another silence, the empty look creeping over features. I’m losing ground again and I struggle even harder with my own despair.

I have another idea but I'm grasping at straws now. “Katniss, what did...Peeta...look like?”

“Peeta? He’s dead,” she says hollowly.

“You said that. What did he look like?” I insist.

“I…” her upper lip trembles before she suddenly stands, walking over to the light switch. “I can’t even get the emergency lights to come on! Some kind of exclusive neighborhood this is!” she says, pacing like a caged animal.

No matter how close I get to a breakthrough, she shuts down or evades. I decide on a desperate ploy.

“Where’s your sister?” I ask, interrupting a new litany of complaints against the utility company.

“My...my sister?” she says and there is real fury in her eyes. “Don’t talk about my sister!”

 _Finally! A real emotion!_ “Yes, your sister, Prim. Where is she?”

Katniss stomps back outside into the garden, anger rolling off of her in waves that strike me with their intensity. “She’s...she’s dead! Dead and gone! Now get out of my house!” She strides over to me and pushes hard on my chest, sending me backwards out of the garden. “You will not talk about my sister!” she shouts

“Why?” I shout back. I’ve lost it and I know as the anger rolls through me that I’ve failed. I sense Mr. Everdeen’s approach from behind.

“Because she’s dead! They’re all dead! You know nothing about it. Nothing! So go home and don’t come back!” She catches sight of Mr. Everdeen as he approaches and stumbles backwards, as if burned.

“Who...who is that? Get out of my house, before I call the police!” she turns around and sprints back into the house, slamming the garden door behind her. I move to go after her but her father pulls me back. I want to fight, yank my arm away but my frustration has already caused too much damage and I know there is nothing to gain by struggling against him. The deep desolation of my failure weakens my knees and I slump against the house under the weight of it. This idea of an afterlife is a mockery and I have been played for the biggest fool of all.

“Some husband I am,” I say moodily. “I came in, certain that, on the strength of our connection, our love, I’d be able to pull her out of here. I was arrogant and stupid and I’m sorry.”

Mr. Everdeen shakes his head. “There is nothing more destructive to a human soul than the loss of hope. You tried. At least you got as far as being able to speak to her.”

“Regardless,” I straighten up. “I wasn’t planning on leaving here without her. If I can’t get her out of here, then I’m not going back.”

Mr. Everdeen furrows his brow in alarm. It brings me a vague satisfaction at being able to surprise him, given the extent of his equanimity during this entire journey.   “You can’t! You won’t be able to resist the despondency of the place, not indefinitely. Katniss has not traveled her path to purification but you have! You would be regressing and there is no way to guess what effect that will have on you.”

“I’ll take my chances. I didn’t marry her to stay with her only when the conditions were convenient. I can’t leave her here and frankly, heaven isn’t much without her anyway.” Having made the decision, I feel somewhat stronger, optimistic even, as if a great weight were lifted from my shoulders. “Tell Prim that I’m sorry I couldn’t bring her sister back but at least Katniss won’t be alone.” I extend my hand to my father-in-law, who stares at it uncomprehendingly before pulling me in for a powerful hug.

“It’s a fine thing you do. I’m proud to call you my son.” He says in resignation as he claps my back with his large palms before releasing me. “Stay strong. Try to resist as long as possible. She may come around yet,” he says but we both know the chances of that are slim. He shakes his head and turns around, making his lonely trek up the hill.

**XXXXX**

I return to the garden door, which is now locked against me. I want to bang my head against the door jamb, mentally cursing myself for losing my temper. Not only does Katniss not recognize me but now she believes I am also a danger to her. I reserve a small spark of hope that, with time, I will persuade her to recognize me for who I really am.

But it’s hard to stay optimistic when every statement I make, every evidence of truth I put forth is met with active denial. Each argument, each attempt at persuasion, no matter how logical and infallible my reasoning, is met head on with the intractable stubbornness of her disbelief.

Then it hits me all at once. Her very disbelief in the survival of the soul after death is her greatest obstacle to understanding. She doesn’t believe she’s dead because to her perfect, scientific mind, there can be no life after death. It is not just her guilt that binds her to this hellish reality - she won’t even acknowledge that she is dead!

This possibility awakens other options in me. I consider another method of attack, one that goes to the very heart of her existence. But first, I have to figure out a way to get to her physically.

My thoughts are interrupted by a scream that comes from inside the house. I press my face against the window panel of the glass garden door and see her standing in the middle of the room, frozen in terror. At her feet is a giant snake of an ethereal, almost translucent snow white color and large fangs the color of blood poised to attack. Searching frantically for a weapon of any kind, I grab a shovel and burst into the house.

The snake corners her, Katniss screaming now from the shock of my entry. I bring the shovel down to bear on the snake’s head with all the force I can muster. I sever the head cleanly from the neck, wondering briefly if such a violent act is really necessary, then deciding it was absolutely indispensable if it convinces Katniss that I am at the very least not intending to harm her.

**XXXXX**

**_Katniss_ **

I stare at the pale, twitching body of the snake, the head lies several inches distance away. Its fathomless black eyes thankfully turned towards a wall and not me.

"Thank you,” I gasp as I try to catch my breath again. I can’t look at the stranger, my apparent rescuer. I fold my arms over my chest and try to rub away the chills racing down them. “They’re everywhere, even in my bed. I’ve always hated snakes!”

I ramble as he scoops up the carcass with the shovel and tosses it outside. His words from earlier still sting, like a swarm of bees, and I chase away the feeling that I should know him. I couldn’t possibly know him. A strange man who moved in down the street and claims to share a name with my dead husband. But the moment he stepped into the garden, something shifted. My gut started churning with unpleasant feelings familiar to me now and yet completely different, as though they were a new cocktail this strange man brought with him.

Guilt. Fear. Longing.

Yes, longing such as I hadn’t felt in ages. Bitter sweet and pure. And with it…a growing sense of clarity. Which is why he scares me so much.

“My wife hated snakes, too,” he answers. “Katniss, I’m sorry for earlier. I lost my temper with you. I’ve always hated arguing with you.”

I stare at him, knowing my face must betray every emotion I feel. Confusion. Anguish. And I wrestle with the meaning of his words. His placating tone. The feelings he brings that should only belong to Peeta.

“You think I’m talking nonsense but if so, I have to ask - How come all your utilities are off at the same time? There haven’t been any storms or local disasters. Why is this happening all of a sudden?”

“I...don’t understand…” I stutter, backing away from him. The dirty liar is clearly still trying to unhinge me.

“Think,” he presses, and I retreat further away, unwilling to hear his words or feel the pain of the memories they bring to the surface. “You never lived like this before and now, all of a sudden, the house is like this?”

He pauses and I curl in on myself, instinctively protecting my ribs from a blow I don’t believe I’ll be able to take. He has blue eyes, this stranger. And I can’t look at them too long for fear that I’ll start to replace Peeta’s eyes in my memories with the stranger’s. I’ve already started to forget exactly what Peeta looked like, the mental image gone hazy. Lost in ashes and mist.

“You’re dead, Katniss. You killed yourself.”

My body begins to shake uncontrollably, my hands covering my ears as I shake my head and try to block out his words. There is no way he or anyone else could know about what I tried and failed to do that night. I haven’t left the house or spoken to anyone since.

“You’re lying!” I scream. “I’m not dead!”

“You are dead! You swallowed every prescription pill you could find in the cupboard and you killed yourself. That’s why you’re here!”

“It’s not true!” I should be dead. How I long for death! And Peeta. Mostly I long for Peeta and his arms. His warm embrace that this stranger seems determined to torment me with, building false hopes that I might once more have hope or the arms and lips that I yearn for. But I can’t ever have those again. Alive or dead.

The floorboards creak beneath my feet and splinter. I stumble blindly into the sitting room, running from the meaning behind his declarations and whatever new horror now creeps from beneath the foundations of our home. I can’t be dead. If I were dead, I wouldn’t be here. It’s why I took all those pills. I needed to find the black oblivion that comes after life. I couldn’t bear another day of this. Of listening to Peeta and Prim die in my head or watching it in my nightmares. I’d be dead now if I had found an opportunity. A weapon. Anything besides rats and snakes, dead plants, and broken dreams. This stranger is nothing but another nightmare.

“And I’m your husband,” he says gently, following me…like a loyal dog…

“If I wasn’t dead, I couldn’t tell you anything that happened after my death. But I can prove to you that what I say is true.”

I quiet myself, my tremors gradually ceasing as I wonder, morbidly so…if he knows about the pills…could he know about the rest? Could it be….?

“I was there, during the wake. The house was full of people but you weren’t there. You were in our room. Do you remember that?”

I sit silently, my lips pressed together to keep from screaming at him again. How could a stranger who just moved in know that? Who told him? Who’s been sharing all the sordid details of my mental health with him? I simply nod, unable to voice my growing fears or hopes, and he continues.

“You were wearing the black dress we’d bought for your conference, remember? You were in bed.” Slowly, he sits down next to me on the sofa and I watch his hands quiver, fingers flexing and unflexing repeatedly…as though resisting the urge to reach out to me. It was one of Peeta’s nervous gestures. Something he did when we fought. “You were crying and it broke my heart. I tried to hold you but I was just a ghost. You called me twice.”

I shiver at the accuracy of the picture he paints and try to block out the pain it brings with it, but it is no use. I exist with this pain or crumble to nothing. He can’t take my pain away from me. He can’t take Peeta away from me. I won’t let him. He moves his hand to hover over my knee but I jerk away from his touch. He doesn’t relent in his recitation, his voice breaking a little, sounding wounded. “I stayed with you the whole night. I even slept - I bet it was a surprise to you how strangely we sleep here…”

“Yes…” I mutter, the word slipping out involuntarily, forced out by a string of nightmares and things that keep happening to me when I think I’m awake and yet make no sense. Even the dreams I had before the night I tried to die…the strange way in which I felt that Peeta could see them…or at least feel them, too. The shadow…

“And the funeral. Do you remember how I touched you and you flinched? You felt me! You can pretend you have forgotten but I was there…”

“Liar!” I protest weakly as tears begin to slide down my face. No, he won’t take the shadow too. But how could he know? Only the diary knows that...

The diary…where is my diary? I haven’t seen that in such a long time either. It should have been in bed with me the morning after the pills…

“I was with you at the cemetery also. It was the biggest mistake I ever made - leaving you there but I was making you crazy, Katniss. I had to go…”

“I don’t believe you!” I hiss. The shadow was mine. A piece of my mind and a figment of my broken heart’s desire but it would have made me insane. Maybe it already has. Why can’t my head just work the way it should? “There are no such things as ghosts or spirits. When you die, you die!”

“You’re the liar, Kantiss.” The stranger’s voice takes on an edge of desperate anger. “ You’re lying to yourself and to me because you yourself saw how Buttercup reacted when I appeared. You even tried to communicate with me, through the wisteria tree painting. Didn’t you think I’d somehow hear you? Why would you do that if deep down inside, you didn’t think I existed?”

I burst into a fit of sobs, keening like a child, unable to hold down the acute yearning I’ve felt since this intruder walked into my barren garden with his haunting words and all his knowledge of things he shouldn’t know unless…

“I want Peeta!” I moan. The stranger holds me, the gesture so warm and soothing. No one else’s arms have made me feel this safe since Peeta died. Has anyone even held me this way since that night? I don’t think they have. So I let him hold me. “Where is he? I need him!”

“I’m here…” he soothes, petting my hair and pushing it away from my face. Just as Peeta used to do…

“No,” I whisper brokenly, weakly trying to pull away. But my words gain strength as I speak. “Why are you doing this? What do you want from me? You can’t take him away from me! He’s already gone! There’s nothing left when you die!” Anger seethes within me and I wrench myself free. Fleeing towards the garden.

I startle at the buckthorn shrubs I find in the hallway, pushing up through the floor, devoid of berries or leaves, but teeming with sharp thorns. These shouldn’t be here. They _can’t_ be here. I reach out a tentative hand and touch a thorn, wincing as it pricks my finger, drawing forth a drop off oozing red blood.

“The dead don’t bleed,” I say, but the stranger has followed me again and I keep moving.

“What if there is more?” The stranger persists. “What if his spirit is still alive and he’s trying to reach out to you? Why won’t you admit the possibility?” I shake my head and hold my injured hand, cradled to my chest. The floors groan and bend upwards as more of the buckthorn break through and I gasp. The bushes shouldn’t grow when they’re dormant like this, let alone at this rate…inside a house.

“I’m here!” The stranger yells and grabs me, whirling me to face him and shaking me a little. “I’m Peeta! Look at me!”

“Let me go!” I snarl.

“I can’t!” He yells back, but I fight him off easily and change directions, running for the bedroom instead. The thorns follow me even here, although their growth slows when I lay on the bed and wrap myself in a blanket of my own grief. I hold on to it, the only thing sending me straight into screeching madness.

“Whether you believe me or not,” the stranger’s quiet voice reaches me as he sits heavily on the bed, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m not leaving you again. If I leave, and you stay here, I’ll have nothing to exist for, no one else I care about. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I forced you to survive without me. I’m so sorry I wasn’t more careful with our lives. I’m sorry I broke you. I will never abandon you again.”

Laying silently on my side, I stare with unseeing eyes at the wall where the frames that once held our pictures now hang covered in ash. All of my energy focused on resisting the temptation his words offer. A finger runs delicately along my jawline. My entire being responds to the touch and I flinch, but stifle any other reaction. I won’t let him know how badly I’ve longed for a caress just like that, from Peeta’s hands.

The light in the room, perpetually ashen gray since I tried to kill myself, does something strange in that moment. It shifts. Darkens. As though any hope left in the room were sucked away. Stolen.

The stranger stretches out alongside me, blocking my view of the destroyed pictures and stares directly into my eyes.

“Thank you,” he says softly. “Thank you for being so wonderful, a man would give up heaven for hell just to hang around you.” The room grows darker still. Approaching what midnight would look like if I had any midnights left.

“I told you I’d stay with you and I meant it,” he whispers, and the temperature seems to drop along with the light. I finally focus my eyes on the strangers’, still not wanting to really look, but he’s using Peeta’s words, and that is unforgivable. His face is contorted, lips curled with great effort as he struggles to continue speaking.

“I promised you. I promised…” His speech is strained as I watch his face twist with something like madness.

“Always…”

The word sinks through layers of thought and misery to settle somewhere deep inside me. A glowing promise, pulsing with light and hope. The stranger’s form, up to now, oddly fluid in shape, solidifies. The hollow echoes of his voice recede in my mind as I tilt my head and a lone tear treks down my face.

“Peeta?” I whisper.

His jaw has gone slack, his brow furrowed as he looks around, eyes haunted. I know that look, even though I’ve only seen it once before. It came with a dead sister and a sanatorium and divorce papers that I had asked for.

_Me coming here isn’t helping you...and it’s killing me._

I release a strangled, gasping moan, like that of a person who has been drowning and just rediscovered air. He’s here. Real. With me.

“Peeta,” I say desperately and fly up off the bed, pulling him with me so we’re kneeling on the pillowed surface, face to face. His pupils grow wide, encompassing his irises in hopeless black.

“It’s so cold in here,” he murmurs, looking around at our bedroom with vacant eyes. “Aren’t the lights or the heater working? I’m so tired.”

A tendril of dread curls through me, completely unlike the constant humming misery I’ve lived in since the sounds of Peeta’s car crashing first reached me over the phone. No…this feels…real. Sharp and clear. Not a nightmare or a hallucination but much more dangerous.

“Peeta, no! Don’t leave me. You can’t leave me here alone! You promised!”

I whimper in pain, clutching his limp hands in mine and pressing kisses to them. I can’t watch him sink to the same depths as my despair and shut my eyes to block out the sight. How did we get here?

Memory returns to me, one piece at a time. All in reverse, as though I were reliving my life backwards. Isn’t that what they say happens when you die? That your life flashes before your eyes? I relive the entirety of my days on earth. I fall to pieces and destroy my world, the words of _The Hanging Tree_ sung in my own broken voice slithering through my conscious.

 _Don’t wear this necklace of rope with me,_ I think as Peeta pulls his hands free and I tug on his shoulders to keep him close. _Don’t follow me into this eternity. Not_ this _Always._

The horrible days after Peeta’s death. The car wreck that took his life, although I wasn’t really there. Years of precarious happiness together. Prim. A seaside trip with her and Peeta. The three of us building a sandcastle together. Our wedding day. I fall in love with him all over and desperately hold onto that feeling of hope while the rest plays on. My mother in the hospital, years of caring for Prim, flashes of Peeta’s life I would never have seen but do not question the presence of in my subconscious. My father teaching me how to shoot an arrow…all the way to the beginning of memory and then nothing but white light.

I cry out, an unintelligible sound of pure emotion. I don’t know how to save Peeta from this nightmare I’ve concocted. From the world that comes after death. I look around at the remains of our house. Did…did I really do this to us?

_A hollow of dead brush where flowers used to grow._

I clasp his face in my hands and hold it to mine, pressing our cold lips together as he struggles weakly to detangle himself from me. As though he no longer recognizes me. It isn’t possible. No one could make Peeta forget me. Or that he loves me. Dying hurt less than this.

A memory reaches me. Small and quiet.

_Peeta frowns at the paper in front of him before tearing it from the sketch book and throwing the crumpled ball across the room. He stands and stalks into the kitchen, his footsteps heavy. I rarely see him so frustrated with his art and follow him, to make sure he’s okay._

_“Peeta?” I ask as he rummages in the pantry. “Do you want to talk about it?”_

_“No,” he says tersely, and I bite back an angry retort._

_Instead, I wrap my arms around his middle and kiss him between the shoulder blades, trace lazy circles over his abdomen. He heaves a sigh._

_“I’m sorry, Katniss,” he whispers. “I shouldn’t have been short with you.”_

_“I’m sorry, too,” I answer._

_“Why?” He twists a little in my embrace and I duck my gaze away from his. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”_

_“I keep making things difficult. And sometimes I think that when you don’t talk to me, it’s because you’re afraid that you’ll break me. That I’m somehow…weaker.”_

_“I don’t think that, Katniss.” Peeta turns completely and holds me to his chest, his fingers clutching my back, nose buried in my hair. “I’m afraid I might break if I give in to this pain and take you with me.”_

_I snort in response. “You think I’m crazy. For believing it was my fault.”_

_“No,” he says vehemently. Then he leans back and waits for me to look up at him, brushes the hair off my forehead, a wistful smile on his face. “Sometimes, the things we believe in our minds are far more real than any truth. Science and logic be damned. You believed it was your fault. That made it real to you. And that’s all that mattered. I don’t believe for a second that Prim’s death was your fault. But you did. Still do sometimes. I can see it in your eyes. So that’s the reality we have to work with.”_

_I tuck my head under his chin and listen to his heart beat. Steady and strong. I hold onto him until my breathing matches the rhythmic tha-thump against my cheek. And I absorb his words as he opens to me, and somehow, neither of us breaks._

It’s a long shot. Probably futile. But I try it anyways. If I made this prison out of our home, then I can unmake it. I can change what is real in my mind. The silhouette of our tree looms a short distance outside the filth covered bedroom window. An idea takes shape, a seed that germinates and plants roots. A tiny pearl that I hold close and polish until I almost smile.

_We’ve got some flowers to grow._

“Stay with me, Peeta,” I plead and taking his hands in mine again, I hold them, palms flattened, against my cheeks and I kiss him full on the mouth. Tears stream down my face and I imagine them as a steady, gentle rain, flowing free from a cloud filled sky. I imagine it washing away the fear and guilt of this place as I recall every beautiful memory I can.

I start with the primrose. That one is easy. My beautiful sister lost so young. Her carefree sass and bubbling optimism. I imagine her life as the yellow and pink flowers she was named for fluttering in a breeze. Pixie like. I can hear her sing while splashing in ocean waves and swallow down a sob. Because this time, her song is not meant to torment me.

Peeta flinches against me, his wrists straining under my hands. I grip them tighter, almost to the point of pain. To anchor us both as I paint a dream for us.

Orange trees in bloom. Our wedding reception. It was in a garden with the playful scent of the orange blossoms waltzing through the night. I grab the memory with both hands and channel it towards Peeta. He pulled me close that evening and rubbed our noses together in a stolen moment, hidden from view by the orange trees, a dazzling smile on his face. I replace the crumbling walls of our house with the fragrant trees.

_You’re stuck with me for Always._

Forget-me-nots come next. Tiny blue stars. A promise to remember. My mother happily twirling around me in a blue dress, her first new dress in ages, while my father watches with a loving smile. The flowers spring forth in her wake.

Amaranth, red vows of eternity waving gently in a summer breeze. The colors separate and soften, a painting bathed in sunset hues. Peeta giving me a look of feigned annoyance when I shove his sketch book off his lap with my feet and demand a massage after a long hike through the mountains.

Around me, I hear strange sounds. The sighing of a world released from tension as I continue to nurture an Eden in my mind’s eye and share it with Peeta through this endless kiss. I kiss him until my chest aches and I can barely breathe and still I hold our mouths sealed together. We’re dead. We need only breathe each other to survive.

Jasmine. The scent weaves around me like the vines those sensual flowers grow on. I cannot grow them without resurrecting our wisteria draped tree, the two memories eternally tied together. Brave and adventurous purple puffs. White elegance tinged with pink.

Peeta draws in a ragged breath through his nose, his body shuddering, and I wonder if he can see it, feel it, too. Sensuous nights of love, laughter, and paint. The belief that life could go on. Be good again.

I give the tree companions, so it may never know loneliness. Towering pines, sturdy oaks, and ethereal birch. Sentinels of the living we left behind on earth. Johanna. Finnick. Annie. They are all the different woods of my childhood. The ones my father gave me and Peeta adopted along with me and Prim.

And then, his laughter. A sliver of auditory sunshine that clears away the clouds and reveals an infinite blue sky dotted with singing birds in blazing feathered plumage. I give the buckthorn bushes their waxy leaves and bright red berries, life out of death. Beauty out of misery.

Dandelions by the hundreds. By the thousands. A million promises of Always in white clouds and yellow crowns woven in braids, a quilt of hope laid over the ground.

For just the space of a heartbeat, I feel Peeta’s hands tremble under my own. Then his thumbs glide across my cheeks, gathering my tears and wiping them away. His lips respond to mine. A second pair of hands rests on my shoulders and squeeze. Familiar and comforting. They make me think of my father and how badly I’ve missed him, too.

And then everything turns to purple mist.

**XXXXX**

**_Peeta_ **

I think I died again.

When I open my eyes, it feels as if I’ve been sleeping for an eternity. The weight that lay heavily on my chest is gone and I feel light and unburdened again. The sky is a sliver of sapphire blue outlined by the frame of our bedroom window. I’m alive and, for the moment, I’m giddy from the feeling of lightness of being freed from the deadly desolation that had settled within.

I also know that I am no longer alone.

I know she’s here, next to me, without having to turn my head. But I want to look at her, feast all of my senses, all the necessary and unnecessary ones. I want to drown all of myself in Katniss.

I haven't opened my eyes yet but her face hovers over mine and she smiles down so sweetly, it confounds my ability to speak. She hesitates, pausing to stare at me as I sleep, and I know she wants to kiss me.

"Well, if you don't do it, I will," I tease, opening my eyes and catching her by surprise.

Her breath hitches and every corner of me aches with her beauty. She is no longer that self-immolating wraith I’d discovered in the squalid prison of her personal hell but luminous and healthy - full of life.

Her aura frames her face and it captivates me more than anything I’ve ever seen before. I see music and hear the colors that dance and move with a cadence that matches mine - deep green like her father and a sweet pink that calls to mind Prim’s patterns, most likely an inheritance from their mother’s.

And there is me. My sunset orange.

_We’d only been dating for a few months. But when I said love at first sight, I was not exaggerating. I was blown away by how right it felt to be with Katniss. We could speak about everything. It was so staggering the way we clicked that we seemed to gloss over the easier, more basic aspects of our personalities because it was so easy to speak so intimately with Katniss._

_“Isn’t it interesting that I know everything about your family situation and the way you feel about your sister but I don’t even know what your favorite color is?” I asked. We were lounging in the grass at the park, Katniss’ head on my lap. I toyed with her braid as the afternoon sun began to dissolve._

_A smile crept across her lips. “Green. What’s yours?”_

_“Orange,” I said._

_“Orange? Like a bright, tacky orange highway cone?” she teased, wrinkling her nose at the image in her mind._

_“A bit more muted,” I said. “More like...sunset.”_

_Sunset. It greeted us now, as if our conversation had accelerated time and invoked it. The rim of the descending sun, the sky streaked with shades of orange, beautiful like a tiger lily cookie I’d once frosted for Katniss. Beautiful like the girl whose heart I would one day make mine._

And that’s when I know I have her back.

“Peeta! I thought you were gone!” she says, hiccupping between her sobs.

“Shhh…” I say, brushing away her tears, real because she still thinks she needs them here. “Don’t cry. You’ve cried enough,”

“Dad said you would wake up but I was so afraid. I already lost you…” she presses her head to my forehead.

“I’m here now,” I say, taking in every detail of her. I’m starving for everything about her and I want to burst with real happiness when I feel her press so closely to me.

She nods and speaks to me but I have no more words left in me. She probably doesn’t realize yet that she can communicate with her mind. I pull her down instead and kiss her, running my hands along her back, clasping her to me. I have spent the better part of my adult life kissing her, but this is more than kissing. I have a powerful feeling of deja vu and I realize that we’ve been here before. We’ve spent most of our mortal lives unconsciously attempting to recreate this moment, what we were doing now, what we have always done, since the beginning of our existence.

It’s not love-making - the only word that comes to mind is _fusion_. In our kiss, we speak wordlessly to one another of everything our hearts had been unable to share in our human forms, because of the limitations of time and space, the boundary of our bodies, life and eventually, death. The entire panoply of slings and arrows that was once our mortal lives falls away until there is only Katniss and I, soul to soul, with no impediments between us. We are finally home again, not in heaven, or hell but in each other. This is why there are so few of us, why soul mates are so dangerous and rare - because within each other, we have no need for anything else in all of existence. The entire universe is contained in us.

I press her onto her back from force of habit and she winds her arms around me, clutching me tightly. The first thing I feel is relief, followed by longing. I desire all of her, not just her flesh and bone, so undressing her, kissing her, tasting her skin is now something for another existence altogether. And yet we go through the human motions, from the memory of our bodies bound to earth, removing each other’s clothing. I listen and, with satisfaction, hear her sighs, kiss her neck and shoulders.

But mind is everything and as I hover over her, I am no longer separate from her in any space defined by the four dimensions that confined our small but precious existence. I am her and she is me and here I see that our entire earthly sexual lives had been another effort to get to the state we are in now. There is no place to get to, no climax to reach - we are at our most natural condition of being when we are continuous with each other, which is what had made our separation practically unendurable for the both of us.

“Peeta,” she exclaims in wonder as our auras meet and the pieces I carried become fused with the pieces that define her, forming something so luminous and complete, we could be a comet in the sky and no one would have recognized us.

“Trust me,” I say.

She nods and listens to me as I open the gates of memory to her. I show her everything that had happened since I died - every memory is written in my aura, waiting for her to add her part. I show her my time in the mist, watching her as she grieved, forced to leave for her own good, my time in heaven, my descent into hell. I show her all the experiences of my earthly life, the ones she’d never seen before and let her write herself into those memories also, because she was a part of me as much as I was a part of her.

Katniss shudders, struggling for a way to reciprocate and I tell her, “Just want it and it will happen.”

And without hesitation, she floods me with her life and I watch her painting the wisteria tree, watch her search for me, speak to me, believing herself to be insane. She returns to work without any desire or joy, but from obligation and necessity. I watch her become more and more hopeless until it's all too much for her and I weep for her. Then, I am her as she traverses her time in the Second Sphere and I see myself as she saw me - a stranger in her strange house, awakening to me and finally understanding who I am.

In that instant, I am suffused with a powerful wave of love and I know it comes from her. Katniss glows, so bright, she drowns out everything and I forget who I am. We don’t have to verbalize to one another that we love each other and that we always would. In that infinite moment of union, we see everything the other has seen, feel everything the other has felt. I don't know where she ends and I begin - we are not in the colors and patterns and music of our auras, we _are_ the colors and patterns and music of our auras. We are the force of life, bound up inextricably with one another, beyond weeping and crying and laughter. We are the memory of all that we’d been and all that we would be until nothing is distinctly mine or hers any longer. At long last, there is the relief that comes after a long separation, when two souls traverse the vast and lonely expanse of the universe to finally find each other again.

**XXXXX**

After, we lie in bed, playing with the energy from our auras, watching them merge and separate as we bring our hands together before pulling them apart. The game we play creates infinite patterns of light and dark when she reverts to speech.

“How did you get it into your head that you could be successful coming after me like you did? There was no precedent whatsoever.” she says turning her attention to toying with my hair.

“But we did have a precedent! We’ve been together since we were made,” I say, running the pads of my fingers over her arms. It is primitive but after so much distance, merely touching each other is an infinite pleasure.

“Right. Soul mates,” she smiles, glancing out the window. “Dad told me you made everything here?”

“I just thought of the most beautiful place in the world, the place that most reminds me of home,” I sit up suddenly, startling Katniss. “I’m sorry, but there’s something we have to take care of.”

Katniss casts me a questioning look but takes my proffered hand and climbs out of bed.

I thread my fingers through hers and we leave the house. It’s a perfect day and I watch happily as Katniss takes all of it in, enjoying the sun on her face. I am sure I will burst into a ball of fire from joy as I watch her. She is resplendent. Happy. Here with me. And I love her so very much.

“I love you too, Peeta,” she responds, glancing slyly at me and I realize my thoughts are still a beacon bursting from my mind.

We make our way up the hill and stand before the tree of ash. Katniss kneels before it, touching the tree trunk, the ash falling from it like clumps of dirt on a potted plant.

“Is this…?” she asks, though she knows. She knows everything now.

“Yes,” I answer.

She looks at it again, the pain dampening the brightness of her aura. “You heard me all that time, didn’t you?” she asks rhetorically.

I kneel before the tree. “I heard your song. And saw the things you added to the painting as they appeared here. No one knew what to think of it.”

“I’m so sorry!” she says, kneeling next to me, still staring at the destroyed tree. “I was desperate. I couldn’t believe you were still alive in some way and yet I was making myself crazy, thinking that I could still feel you near me. Turns out I was right.”

“You don’t have to explain,” I say gently, toying with her hair. I can’t help but touch her.

“But I do! It was our painting and I ruined it.”

“Then let’s make the tree grow again,” I say.

“Together?” she asks skeptically.

“Together,” I answer. She will never be the kind of person who does not question the world around her. She’ll always have a little doubt about everything, which is what makes her so amazing to me.

“C’mere,” I say, settling in the grass behind her, my thighs on either side of hers. “You’ve done this already. Just pretend you’re painting.”

I take her smooth, slender hand and hold it in mine, as if she were holding a paintbrush.

“Mind is everything. Whatever you can imagine, it will appear just because you want it to.” I lift her hand and air paint the shape of the tree before us.

“The purer your soul, the more beauty you will create,” I whisper in her ear.

“I’m not as pure as you are,” she retorts.

I lean back, turning her face by the chin to better look at her. “I never want to hear you say that again. You are good and pure and beautiful. If it weren’t for you, we’d still be in hell,” I flick her nose teasingly. “And if you have any doubt, just look at me. I’m the other half of you.”

Katniss’ eyes grow bright and misty. She leans back further and we kiss again. I am lost in a ravenous hunger for her but release her lips long enough to complete our work. The tree blooms, towering over us, it’s branches thickening and becoming heavy with amethyst-colored flowers before I recapture her lips again.

She twists around and straddles me, pressing me back into the grass. Her light surrounds me like a shield against the world, the light more than illumination but a manifestation of her love. And like the sun, she shines her pure love on me. I think back on a quote from my school days, _He whom love touches walks not in darkness._

“Katniss…” I’m lost in amazement and rendered speechless by her.

She smiles slowly, blindingly beautiful. “I don’t know how everything works here yet but I can hear your thoughts. I feel you here,” she presses her hand where her heart would be. “And I feel myself inside of you. It’s not strange, or terrifying. It’s perfect. I have the feeling I’ve been searching for you for much longer than I’ve been alive and I don’t want to be separated from you again. I want it to be like this for always.”

At that, she lower her head and kisses me, flooding me with her and I lose every desire to know where and when I am. I am with her and everything else ceases to hold any meaning for me.

“Peeta,” she says breathlessly, her aura vibrating with a sultry excitement. “Can we...can we do that thing we did before? Where we, you know...I don’t even know how to describe it!” she exclaims.

I close the distance between us, kissing her until the world spins. “Why don’t you just show me?”

**XXXXX**

**_Katniss_ **

Peeta is eager to show me more. I can see the excitement glowing on his face and feel it beneath my skin. It may take me some time to shed these thoughts of corporeal things. Faces, skin, heartbeats, lips. To fully accept the soft orange currents that seem to flow around him, through him, and change with his thoughts. What my father had explained was an aura. A visual representation of the soul’s light.

But for now, we take in the lush garden I somehow brought with me from the depths of my own personal hell. It now grows beside our home here, which is something my father couldn’t explain either, but had scratched his chin and shrugged, saying he’d have to ask someone what that was all about.

The sight of the flowers reminds me that my heaven is not yet complete. As happy as being reunited with Peeta has made me, there is another branch to this family, and I feel her absence as a gaping hole in the landscape around us.

“Hey,” Peeta squeezes my hand, already knowing my thoughts and feelings. “Just tell me when you’re ready and we’ll go see her.”

“She’s here?” I ask brokenly.

“She has her own slice of heaven, too. But I know where to find her. She was my guide when I first arrived, although I couldn’t really see her until I was ready.”

I nod and step away for a moment, listening to the birds rejoice in the sky and the wind sing through the trees. I examine my feelings. Guilt that I didn’t ask to see her first thing on arriving here.

Peeta chuckles. “I’m not complaining. And I think she would understand. She’d probably laugh and tease us…‘Ew. Gross, you two.’”

I look over my shoulder at him with an eyebrow raised and let him feel my annoyance. Then I return to my task…

Fear that she will blame me or be angry with me for not saving her.

“She’s doesn’t. She never did. But you’ll only truly believe that by seeing her.”

And...longing. Peeta takes my hand in his, a soft smile on his face.

“Close your eyes and just think of Prim,” he instructs.

As soon as I do, the air changes. I sniff lightly, salt and humidity, fragrant flowers. Off to the side, I hear the rolling and lapping waves of an ocean. Opening my eyes, I find crystal turquoise waters stretching out as far as I can see. Palm trees sway in the breeze that sweeps along the shore. To our right is a quaint beach bungalow, a wide staircase leads from the sand up onto a veranda lined with chairs and tables for sitting and enjoying the view. An abundance of glorious tropical flowers flourishes on all sides of the house.

I gasp at the beauty of the place, but what seizes my attention and holds tight is the foundation of a structure in the sand. A sand castle. Buckets and digging tools, such as would be necessary on earth, wait in a neat pile next to the structure, as if…

“I was waiting for my family to help me finish it.”

My eyes close at the sound of her voice and something pounds in my chest. Not my heart because I no longer have a heart in the physical sense. I suppose this must be love. Pure, unconditional love for another soul. Different from the connection I share with Peeta, but just as powerful and consuming. Slowly, I turn, not quite willing to let myself believe that she’s here for real this time and not another self-inflicted torment.

When I finally open my eyes, a choked sob escapes me as Prim, blonde ponytail swinging wildly, flings herself at me. Her skinny, girlish arms wind around my neck in a fierce embrace and we collapse onto the sand. I inhale the ocean salt, innocent laughter, and the hint of spice of her sass.

“I’ve missed you, Little Duck. I’m so sorry,” I say to her.

“I’ve missed you, too,” she replies. I don’t know when or how she does it, but suddenly, Peeta is there, too. Encompassed in our embrace, kneeling with us in the sand. My eyes blur with superfluous and yet necessary tears. Tears of joy as I watch the dancing yellows and pinks of her aura...just like the primrose bushes I conjured in hell. Perfect.

“I knew he could bring you back! I just knew it,” she declares.

I feel rather than hear Peeta’s laughter beside me. “Actually, Katniss did this one all on her own.”

Then we are silent, sharing a long hug and allowing the years of anguish and what-ifs to float away on an ocean wave.

“You couldn’t have stopped it,” she finally says, sounding a thousand years old. “And you have to know, short or not, my life was so much better because of you two.”

Prim giggles then and ends the embrace. She wears her familiar smile. The one that promises laughter and an adventure.

“But this sand castle isn’t going to finish itself,” she says brightly. We set to work in her tropical paradise and it is while we’re building turrets and ramparts that I sense a fourth presence on the beach. One I already know well. A comforting touch on the shoulders. My father stands in the shade of Prim’s porch and nods once before melting into the shadows. I want him to join us. I want--

“He has work to do,” Prim explains. “He’ll be back. Besides, he’s still a little lonely and lost without Mom. She won’t be here for a few more earth years, though.”

The thought of my mother, back on earth, alone in the sanitorium with all those efficient doctors and no visitors frustrates me. It isn’t right. It shouldn’t be that way.

“Who said life was fair?” Prim teases. “She’ll be fine. Besides, we had a new arrival from that area while Peeta and Dad were gone looking for you. A nurse. Mom is actually doing a little better. Dad thinks it has something to do with you two finding one another here, although he can’t quite explain it. Plus, Finnick and Annie started visiting her. They went first to tell Mom about you and Peeta, but then they kept going. Turns out, their new baby does wonders for the mind.”

I feel a twinge of sadness at having missed Annie giving birth. Perhaps that was the real reason she and Finnick stopped checking on me. But the news of my mother does lighten my spirit. Enough that we are able to enjoy a time of happiness, building sandcastles and gardens at will, a time in which we return to being the family we once were. When he allows himself a few moments peace from his work or his solitary contemplation, my father joins us, his laughter slightly dampened from what I remember it being on earth.

Until one day, I seek out my father and find that he is no longer alone.

It feels like an intrusion, but I cannot help myself. I watch as my father clasps my mother’s hands in his and pulls her close. The simple connection turns into something greater. I observe with growing joy as the whispering blue that curls in random twists around my mother strengthens and calms then winds around his wrists. What started as erratic blue pulses evens out into tremulous notes. The deep browns of my father’s aura assume the same rhythm.

As I watch, the patterns of their joined aura meld into what can only be described as music, vibrant and steady. Complementary. She is treble, and he is bass. Even their colors, forest green and rich soil brown, sky blue with brief flashes of pink, paint a musical picture so beautiful, it almost hurts to watch.

My mother laughs, a bright sound I’d forgotten the tenor of, and the pink of her aura joins the dance. I realize that I am watching what happens when Peeta and I are close together. My heart softens at the realization of the similarities in my mother’s and my earth-bound experiences. I know, without even speaking to her or making my presence known to my parents, that they were made for one another as well. That their separation was just as unendurable as mine and Peeta’s. I chose death, she chose to wander alone and confused, dead in heart if not body.

She is suddenly beautiful and carefree again, the woman I imagined twirling in a blue dress through my hell, leaving forget-me-nots in her wake. As I watch, those same flowers stretch and rise from the ground. They dot the forest floor of my father’s heaven---no, their heaven.

I ache to hold her, to feel her hands, such as they are here, weave a braid through my hair. But that is a joy to be experienced another day. I have eternity to apologize to my mother for not understanding. To rediscover what we lost when my father died. For now, I leave my parents to their reunion, and seek out Prim to share in the joy of our mother’s return.

**XXXXX**

**_Peeta_ **

Time passes - indefinite time. We learn to function in this environment and grow from what we learn. Katniss is a gifted tracker, like her father, and goes along with him on his excursions into the Lower Spheres. The first time she went, she was blinded by terror and had to return right away. But once overcome, her fear became courage, her particular intimacy with the desolation of those realms giving her a powerful insight into the poor souls that condemned themselves to self-punishment.

I am content to paint and learn from an infinite library of knowledge in the city Prim had always spoken of. Unlike Dis, this city was bustling with souls going about the business of their different tasks. There’s no violence or anger here. These souls are kind, almost to a fault, and deeply fulfilled by their existence.

But most of my time is spent with Katniss, when she is not off with her father. I am lonely and somewhat dampened by her absence but I guess that is one of the occupational hazards of soul mates - one is not worth much without the other. You have only to watch the enormous difference in Mr. Everdeen now that he is joined by his wife to know that this is true.

Then Finnick and Annie both appear, almost at the same time, and I realize that maybe soul mates are not as rare as I thought as I watch their sea-foam colored souls unite in fluid harmony, like the sea Prim loves so much. Or maybe, we gravitate to one another. Who will ever know?

However, the day comes when Katniss slowly becomes restless. In the end, we are all made for life on Earth, no matter how idyllic paradise may be. I see in Katniss’ thoughts, how she cherishes certain experiences, ones that can only be had in mortal form. I catch her daydreaming about hunting and hiking in a forest full of decay as well as life.

So it comes, what I have long suspected. A request that I can’t deny.

“I want to fall in love with you again,” she says as we walk our vast garden in moonlight, galaxies swirling overhead as if they could be plucked like apples from the sky. “Have children. Try to make different decisions.”

I pause as I hear her heart’s desire. We’ve long since stopped using our lips and our forms have become so radiant, our physical attributes have largely been subsumed by the totality of our aura. If I had to admit it, I miss the distinct smell of her body, the feel of her thick hair in my hands, her endless grey eyes that make the pinwheel galaxies soaring over our hills look like dull circus trinkets. I miss cooking and eating and making love to her, the limits making each moment of our mortal lives more precious for their very ephemeral nature. Moments are eternal here. But on Earth, each moment we breathe, live, and love is meant to be cherished, for they are short, limited and destined to end.

“We’ll forget our previous life. All the pain and joy will be hidden from us,” I say.

“But they’re in our souls, right? I mean, we forget the events but not the lessons. That is the whole point of purification. Forgetting also levels the playing field, allows us to really live unencumbered, each time as if it were the first,” she pleads.

I take her hand, caressing the knuckles before bringing them up to my lips. “But how will we find each other?”

Katniss laughs, the light bursting from her as she senses my acquiescence. “Well, you found me in Hell. I think I can find you on Earth!”

**XXXXX**

**_Epilogue_ **

When I was a little girl, I met a boy in a bakery.

My father had escaped with me, a special outing to pay me some attention, something he thought I’d been missing since my little sister had been born and we’d been forced to move for his job. Unable to turn my tender feelings of devotion to my baby sister into words, I had not voiced to him that I didn’t mind his and my mother’s preoccupation. But I wouldn’t complain about receiving his precious time either.

It was a perfect spring day, and I basked in his love and attentions. School awaited me on the morrow, and while I was uncertain about making new friends, I knew that I was a decent enough student to adjust well. My father and I sang with the birds until we reached the small bakery on the main street of our new hometown.

The bell over the door rang merrily, and a jovial man greeted us from behind the counter. My father conversed with him while I walked the length of the display case, tapping my finger on my lips, deep in contemplation of the sweet treats before me.

Reaching the end of the case, I pressed my palms and nose to the glass, hungrily eying a flaky pastry oozing with melted cheese and sprinkled with herbs. I had found what I wanted.

A small movement caught my attention through the glass and I lifted my gaze to find the bluest pair of eyes I’ve ever known staring back at me. I felt as though I had been flung high and was soaring in the sky, suspended on unseen gusts of wind, looking back down on the world from a dizzying height. Forgetting the cheese buns, I returned his stare, drinking in the sunshine of his unruly hair and the smattering of freckles that covered his nose and cheeks, the smudge of flour over his right temple and his inconceivably long, golden lashes.

When he smiled, my heart lurched, as if in recognition of something I’d lost a long time ago and had only just found again.  I opened and closed my mouth but that moment of recognition had robbed me of speech and instead I floundered like a bird who’d lost the breeze.

“I think my daughter might prefer something more savory than sweet,” I heard my father say in the background, too busy trying to find my own voice to confirm his assumption.

“Looks like she found it,” the cheerful baker said. “Son, a couple cheese buns for the lady and her father.”

I waited eagerly as the boy placed the pair of buns in a white paper sack and handed them to his father. While my own paid for our purchase, I resumed staring at the boy, caught under his spell and flailing to keep myself from falling from the sky.

I tried to make sense of this feeling that I had, that we were somehow connected by an invisible and yet tangible thread. He gave me another smile, one of almost kind understanding, and my father had to tug on my sleeve to get me to move. As we left, I felt a certain desperation, wondering if I’d ever see the boy again.

I needn’t have worried. Our paths would soon cross again. This time, I would grow old with him on earth. And we’d find each other once more on the other side as we always had and always would, both in life and after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To solasvioletta and abbythebear...thank you for sticking with us through this sometimes harrowing but ultimately fulfilling experience. Thank you for making us laugh even at the darkest points and for correcting our sometimes awful grammar and word choices. We love you, Always!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to abbythebear and solasvioletta for betaing this fic! Day 1 of 7


End file.
